A stacked Newcastle United U-9-side fell on a 1-2 home defeat against Southampton, because some of our first team stars built a few minutes before their long-awaited first performances in the Premier League.
With Southampton who took the lead after 15 minutes, no Sean his second in two games a little later, while he launched his business to be admitted as a senior striking option, while Alexander Isak remains absent.
But a decisive goal in the second half of the visitors saw us suffer a defeat in Whitley Park in the opening match of our Premier League 2 campaign.
Despite the result, it is a positive sign that Eddie Howe could be willing to make some large phone calls prior to the coming matches against Liverpool and Leeds.
On Sunday afternoon, a rather unusually strong Newcastle United U-9-side saw go to the field in Whitley Park to start their PL2 campaign.
Lewis Hall was the great inclusion, because he earned his first competitive minutes before the club on every capacity since his seasonal injury in February and looked in possession solid and sharp.
Seung-Sooo Park was also recorded after his impressive preseason performances, another sign that he could be set up directly in the U-21s instead of Leen abroad, like so many of our other recent youth signs.
In reality, Park struggled to make a major impact and was often contained by the defense of the saints, which strengthens the suggestions that he may need a year with the second team to develop his game before being thrown into Howe’s senior team.
Participation in the duo was a number of highly rated youth talents, with Alfie Harrison, Sean Neave, Trevan Sanusi, Cathal Heffernan and Travis Hernnes, only a number of U-21 hopeful hope to step quickly.
Alex Murphy started at Center-Back and Harrison Ashby also came in on the right back, whereby the former West Ham talent was now confronted with an uncertain future after the previous season after a loan period on QPR previous term.
Despite the close defeat against a Southampton side that finished above our young magpies last season, coach Robbie Stockdale had a lot of praise for all involved, including Senior Stars Hall and Seung Sooo.
“We didn’t know what our team would look like until Saturday, but we are here to offer those opportunities for the senior players and I thought they were all coming down and came very well for us and they will be better because they have that game under their belts.”
Newcastle United Under-21s: Max Thompson, Harrison Ashby, Cathal Heffernan (C), Alex Murphy, Lewis Hall, Anthony Munda, Travis Hernnes, Alfie Harrison (Scott Bailey 77), Trevan Sanusi, Sean Neaf 70).
Subs not used: Charlie Mcarthur, Adam Harrison, Joe Brayson.
Even if it comes in the very first week of the season, the coming match against Liverpool is perhaps our most brightly disputed match of the entire season outside both Derby match.
After the entire Alexander Isak -debacle of the summer, and because it is the first home game of the new campaign, we will be on Monday evening for Blood on the side of Arne Slot.
And Howe can choose to give an extra motivated Lewis Hall his return to the starting XI for the game. He was an unused sub in Saturday’s draw in Villa Park, but in view of the Liverpool match in February, which cost the chance to play in the Carabao Cup final, then there might not be a bigger game to see and play.
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