Eddie Howe is now keeping company with Kevin Keegan and Rafa Benitez as the orchestrater of nine straight Newcastle wins – the challenge is to leave that pair looking up at him on the podium.
Keegan and Benitez won lots of matches and just as many hearts, but no trophies. Howe can. He and his players have a glint in their eye and silverware in their sights.
And why can’t that be the Premier League, in a season of no runaway leader and with pace-setters Liverpool beginning to slow?
None of Newcastle’s rivals have Alexander Isak, scorer of another two goals here to make it 12 in his last 10 games and 17 for the season. He also got an assist and a saved a goal with a challenge inside his own goalmouth.
None of their rivals have Sandro Tonali or Bruno Guimaraes, either. To think, we wondered if they could even play together just over a month ago, with the team stuck in the bottom half of the table. Now, they are artist and aggressor, and those roles are interchangeable.
It really is mystifying to remember Tonali charging up and down blind alleys as a No.8 during the first part of this season. A player of his vision should never be partially sighted. The Italian deserves to have the full picture in front of him and, from No.6, he continues to make strokes that others simply cannot.
Alexander Isak scored in either half to put Newcastle on their way to a ninth straight win

His first goal took a huge deflection, while his second was coolly slotted past Jose Sa

Eddie Howe’s team are flying and must now be targeting a trophy this season
When you have the likes of Isak and Anthony Gordon in front of you, those images are certainly easier to see. Gordon was the other scorer, for a fourth straight game. There is class and confidence running through Newcastle’s forward players as quickly and ferociously as they’re running through defenders at present.
The only defence who could keep them out, on current form, is their own. This was a sixth clean sheet amid those nine wins and Dan Burn and Sven Botman are a centre-back pairing disproving the theory that two lefties can’t play together. For them, everything feels right.
It says much for Newcastle’s mid-season revival that supporters spent the eve of this game debating what was the best result between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool, the teams in third and first before this round of fixtures. A draw, it was determined, gave them the chance to gain two points on both, and so it was.
The danger, as Howe had warned, was the assumption that the visit of Wolves meant another three points. The scar tissue remains from home defeats by West Ham and Brighton in the autumn.
But winter has been a scorcher on Tyneside and, on a mild night beneath a full moon, they again sent the mercury rising.
Isak’s opener on 34 minutes needed a slice of good fortune in the form of a heavy deflection off Rayan Ait-Norui, diverting his 20-yard shot away from a well-positioned Jose Sa. The goalkeeper looked like a man who had made provisions for rain only to find a hole in his umbrella.
But when Isak bounced through three Wolves jerseys minus his customary control, you sensed that luck was on his side. Not that the record books care for aesthetics and an eighth straight Premier League game in which he has scored is a club best, overtaking Alan Shearer and Joe Willock.
There were a couple of nervy moments when Howe’s fear of complacency hung in the air, most notably when Jorgen Strand Larsen cracked the post just before half-time. Newcastle were not at their fluent best in that first half, but when you have Isak, you don’t have to be.

Jorgen Strand Larsen hit the post when Wolves were only 1-0 down in the first half, and was also denied by the woodwork after the break

He was made to pay for his misses as Anthony Gordon added a third goal for Newcastle
The Swede had his second before the hour, this time accepting the cutest of passes from Guimaraes before sweeping beyond an exposed Sa. He would have needed more than an umbrella to reach this one, expertly buried into the bottom corner.
And Isak turned provider to cap yet another man-of-the-match display, supplying the pass for Gordon to hook in from close range in the 74th minute. If there is a criticism it is that he should have had his hat-trick in the moments before that goal when sent clear. For once, he lacked conviction and his shot was blocked. Undeterred, he put one on a plate for his pal instead.
He left to standing ovation soon after but it was Howe’s name ringing out on full-time. King Kev is still adored in these parts, but the succession plan is in place. Bring home a trophy and there will be a coronation.
Source From: Premier League News, Fixtures and Results | Mail Online
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