Newcastle United 2 Bolton Wanderers 1: A first Newcastle league win since January 15th; a first Bolton defeat in 2005 - and it is March tomorrow. How that situation came to pass, particularly in Bolton's case, was hard to fathom yesterday.
Arriving in seventh place, nine points ahead of Newcastle, only the top four have a better away record than Bolton. Last week Sam Allardyce had even mentioned that Everton might be caught, that Bolton could be a Champions League club next season.
Here that seemed like a dream rather than an ambition. Bolton apparently came for a point and left with nothing.
Although Shay Given was beaten by Stelios Giannakopoulos's equaliser four minutes before half-time, after the interval Bolton disappeared.
"I'm very disappointed," were the first words from Allardyce afterwards - "with the second half particularly. We lost our discipline, we felt so comfortable in the first half that we thought it would just happen again for us in the second. But we made it happen in the first."
Allardyce then produced statistics to illustrate the discrepancy in Bolton's halves: "We gave away two free-kicks in our last third in the first half, we gave away 17 in the second. We lost the game deservedly by encouraging Newcastle to do what they're good at, which is mount attack after attack."
It was only the last Premiership game at St James' - 1-1 against Charlton - that an irate Geordie public chanted "attack, attack, attack," mocking their team and manager Graeme Souness.
It was 25 minutes before Jussi Jaaskelainen was forced to make a save yesterday - Alan Shearer was responsible - and Lee Bowyer's headed goal 10 minutes later was the only other serious action in the Bolton goalmouth. But, as with Bolton, after half-time, Newcastle were different.
Only Bowyer, whose goal was a manifestation of his hunger, had driven Newcastle prior to the break. Spinning away from Gary Speed and Giannakopoulos, Bowyer fed Stephen Carr on the right. As Carr inched forward Bowyer made his way into the middle and charged Kieron Dyer out of the way to meet the cross. Jaaskelainen was well beaten.
Bolton remained calm. Just seven minutes later a series of 15 passes, featuring Jay Jay Okocha, Kevin Davies and a clever Speed header ended with Giannakopoulos steering a volley beyond Given.
The expectation was that the Bolton would kick on from there. Instead they kicked Newcastle with Tal Ben Haim and Fernando Hierro booked within four minutes of the restart, Hierro for an ugly trip on Dyer to blunt a 50-yard surge from the midfielder.
Dyer was to gain recompense 20 minutes later. Before that Ricardo Gardner hoofed a Jean-Alain Boumsong header off the line but after Bruno N'Gotty blocked a Shearer shot, Dyer speared a 12-yard volley into the top corner.
