A week on from Newcastle United’s celebrations of winning the Championship and being promoted at the first time of asking, we look back at the top five performances of the season that led Newcastle to the title.
Rafa Benitez, his team and the players have impressed this season and not only have they secured promotion back into the Premier League after last season’s relegation, the Magpies go up with a piece of silverware on the last day thanks to a win comfortable win against Barnsley and an 89th-minute equaliser from Jack Grealish for Aston Villa against Brighton.
So here’s our countdown of our top five moments of the Championship season.
Newcastle 6-0 QPR
In fifth place is a comfortable 6-0 win over Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road in September of last year.
This ended up being our highest scoring win of the Championship season.
Jonjo Shelvey bagged two goals in the game along with Ayoze Perez and Aleksander Mitrovic getting one goal each. Defenders Ciaran Clark and Grant Hanley also managed to net a goal each.
Newcastle 4-0 Birmingham City
In fourth place is a 4-0 win over at home in December of last year against Birmingham City, who at the time were doing well under Gary Rowett.
After a few shaky performances both home and away, that resulted in two consecutive losses in the Championship, the Magpies managed to get back on track with a comfortable home win thanks to a hat-trick from Dwight Gayle and a goal from Yoan Gouffran.
Newcastle 2-0 Aston Villa
In third place is the return of Henri Lansbury and Aston Villa to St James’ Park in February, after Lansbury’s controversial tactics when playing for Nottingham Forest.
Newcastle secured another home clean sheet and a comfortable win after the previous victory over Derby County. The goals came from Gouffran and an own goal from the pantomime villain Lansbury.
Newcastle 3-0 Barnsley
In our top five performances of the season, we couldn’t leave out the day we won the Championship. So, in second place is last week’s title winning 3-0 victory over Barnsley.
As the pressure was all on Brighton after Newcastle went 2-0 up it was one of our most confident and relaxed performances which resulted in a 3-0 win and the Championship trophy coming to Tyneside for the second time.
With goals from Perez, Gayle and defender Chancel Mbemba also managed to bag a goal.
Newcastle 4-1 Preston
Also, along with winning the Championship, we couldn’t leave out the night we got promoted with one of the most important wins of the season.
So, in first place is the promotion winning 4-1 victory over Preston. A nervy start from the Toon but once Preston went down to 10 men and Newcastle went 3-1 up from a penalty, the confidence came flooding back and the play improved.
Promotion looked secured but then a goal from Perez topped off the night along with goals for Newcastle from Christian Atsu and Matt Ritchie.