No matter what Alan Pardew said last week - we struck it LUCKY against struggling Wigan with that penalty and red card after just 12 minutes. The Toon boss curses his "bad luck", but ... luck evens itself out over a season.
The Wigan victory was hardly the turning point in a horror spell that has seen us win ONE game in ELEVEN!
We had our injury worries, no doubt, but Wigan had eight first team players out, and played 82 minutes with ten men. It was never the "fabulous performance" Pardew made out.
The players put in the effort against Man City, no doubt, and there are times you have to admit "they were better than us".
But look at the facts here, one win in eight Premiership games since our 2-1 win over West Brom in October.
Newcastle 1 Man City 3
Fulham 2 Newcastle 1
Bordeaux 2 Newcastle 0
Newcastle 3 Wigan 0
Stoke 2 Newcastle 1
Southampton 2 Newcastle 0
Newcastle 1 Maritimo 1
Newcastle 1 Swansea 2
Newcastle 0 West Ham 1
Club Brugge 2 Newcastle 2
Liverpool 1 Newcastle 1
Newcastle United have still not overturned a half-time deficit to a victory in the Premier League for six years, but they certainly gave it a go after a wretched first-half.
Alan Pardew: "When you have a mental hurdle like being 2-0 down to the champions, it is not easy to play under those conditions so a lot of credit to the players.
"I really find it difficult to say to them 'look you've only got three points for the last four games' but that's the truth.
"We have to keep believing in what we are doing.
"I know there is not much difference in terms of performance from last season but I do think we have gone through a period of conceding soft goals against us and that has been costly.
"You can change the mood very quickly at this ground, that's the beauty we have with the fans we've got and we did come out.
"The crowd got behind us we got a goal and suddenly the whole atmosphere changed.
"You didn't need to be a genius to work out that the fans would be patient with us today playing the champions but we need that same patience against QPR.
"The players are going to be edgy because of the position we are in.
"Having said that I still think we have very good players in this group still to come back.
"I sense that between now and the end of January is the period for us to make sure we keep out of that bottom area, keep roughly where we are or a little bit higher and we will be OK.
"The QPR game? I don't know how you could put it on a scale. But if we play like we did today we will win."