Smash and grab! Bournemouth 0-1 Newcastle

Perez celebrates A Rob Elliot inspired Newcastle managed to rob three points from Bournemouth in the early kick-off today.

A rare away victory for United lifts them out of the relegation zone ahead of the international break ensuring that the Toon Army make the long trip home with at least something to show for it.

Just a week after bemoaning the performance of Jack Butland for Stoke it is now us who should be thankful for a goalkeeping masterclass provided by Elliot between the stick who pulled off a number of important saves and generally dealt with anything that was thrown at him. And in fairness there was quite a lot thrown at him.

There have been times where we've performed really well as a team but have had to settle for nothing or little from the game but today was a polar opposite of that. In truth we were awful, Bournemouth bossed it by showing tremendous energy and a willingness to attack with pace but they were unable to find the back of the net whilst we did. That was the difference today. Isn't football a funny old game?

I can't recall many of the attempts that Bournemouth had, and that's not me being ignorant it's more a case of they had so many to choose from.

Meanwhile United struggled to make any real impact in the game with only a well-worked goal from Ayoze Perez after good combination work between Aleksandar Mitrovic and Georginio Wijnaldum gave the Spaniard a sight at goal which is all he needed to put us in front. The other chance of note was a header by Fabricio Coloccini which went narrowly over the bar.

Make no bones about it, we were bad today but you have to give credit to Bournemouth for their hard work which had a hand in us being so bad. They pressed us all game long and despite running out of steam right at the death they made it exceptionally hard for us to find any sort of rhythm or build any sort of move. People will focus on us being bad without giving credit to a side that has cause pretty much everyone they've faced so far a hard time.

But the important thing is tree points. During the week the consensus was that we're playing better but it didn't really matter as we were getting nothing to show for it. Well today we got the exact opposite, isn't that what people wanted?

Howay the lads!