Ruthless Newcastle smashes Van Nistelrooy's Foxes
Newcastle United ended its four-game Premier League winless streak with a 4-0 victory over Leicester City, inflicting a first defeat on Ruud van Nistelrooy since he took over at the Foxes.
Eddie Howe's side put its foot on the gas in the second half as three goals before the hour blew the visitors away.
Jacob Murphy's calm finish got the ball rolling in the first half as Leicester struggled to contain the Magpies.
Leicester introduced Danny Ward at the break, but the goalkeeper then had to pick the ball out of his net three times in the opening 15 minutes of the second half.
Bruno Guimaraes nodded home Lewis Hall's flick-on after 47 minutes, before Alexander Isak got in on the act.
Isak then raced through on the counter-attack to tee up Murphy for his second of the game on the hour.
Van Nistelrooy had picked up four points from his opening two games at the helm, but his team was second-best from the start at St James' Park, firing just one shot on target.
Despite the setback of a first loss, Van Nistelrooy is well aware of how quickly an opportunity to react can come about, as struggling Wolverhampton Wanderers heads to King Power Stadium next week.
But he knows the Foxes need to eradicate basic errors ahead of the crunch festive period.
"It was hard. It was 1-0 at half-time. We were a bit lucky not to be down by more. It's costly when you concede in such standard set-piece situations. Then it was going to be hard to turn it around from there," he said.
"We know how intense Newcastle are and the way they play. A lot of the chances they created were from our ball losses, and they got moving quickly on the counter-attack. We kept going and trying, but we have to take this one on the chin and move on."
Howe labelled his side's performance as a clear improvement after the Magpies failed to win any of their previous four league games prior to this contest.
"It was a good performance. The first goal was important. It took a well-worked set play to set the ball rolling, and the second goal was important too, so we were able to express ourselves a little more," the Newcastle boss said.
"We’re disappointed we haven’t been able to show that more this season. Today was one of our better performances."
Howe's cautious optimism was balanced against a rallying message from his captain Guimaraes, who finally ended his wait for a first goal of the season, and the Brazilian called on his team-mates to maintain their momentum ahead of a midweek Carabao Cup quarter-final against Brentford.
"I think we stepped up in this game. It's a massive win. The team played well, especially in the second half," he added.
"I'm very happy to score again. I've been trying for a long, long time, but I wasn't lucky. We need to keep going as we have a massive game on Wednesday [Thursday AEDT].
"We need to step up in all of our games, not just against the big six. Today was big proof this team can do big things together."
