Newcastle’s sixth straight Premier League win – and ninth in all competitions – lifted Eddie Howe’s renascent team to fourth place as Alexander Isak demonstrated precisely why his manager believes he is a good as any striker in the world right now.
Isak’s 16th and 17th goals of an extraordinary season pushed Wolves into the relegation zone, nudging them below fourth bottom Ipswich on goal difference.
The visiting manager, Vitor Pereira, has managed nine clubs in seven countries since leaving Porto in 2013 but all that vast, eclectic, experience failed to help Wolves’ new(ish) Portuguese coach detect a mortal streak in Howe’s suddenly irrepressible, seemingly unstoppable team.
Pereira had told his Wolves players that Newcastle were “not Supermen” and, evidently taking heed, the visitors certainly began in undaunted mode.
Although José Sá needed to make a decent diving save to divert Jacob Murphy’s low, early, curling shot, Gonçalo Guedes should have done better than shoot narrowly wide from around eight yards after Sven Botman deflected Hwang Hee-chan’s cross into his path.
By the 30 minute mark, Sá had, once again, saved smartly from Murphy following the right winger’s expert dodging of Rayan Aït-Nouri and Isak had grazed the outside of a post after connecting with Bruno Guimarães’s defence bisecting pass. As the minutes ticked by Pereira and his staff became increasingly infuriated by some of Darren England’s officiating and seemed in peril of implosion when Dan Burn escaped unpunished after felling Guedes. They subsequently argued a penalty should have been awarded when Guedes crumpled under Isak’s challenge and their mood hardly improved when, in the 34th minute, fortune frowned on the Wolves backline.
Isak’s 16th goal of the season came courtesy of a hefty deflection off Emmanuel Agbadou that re-routed an originally highly speculative shot from the edge of the area beyond a wrong-footed Sá. It meant the Sweden striker joins an elite group of strikers – Jamie Vardy, Ruud van Nistelroy and Daniel Sturridge are the other three – to have scored in eight successive Premier League matches.
If that proved the cue for some impressive attacking cameos from Newcastle – who might have doubled their lead had Sandro Tonali not seen a fine strike deflected off target – Wolves remained a menace on the counterattack.
At the end of one such break, Jørgen Strand Larsen met Rodrigo Gomes’s cross before watching his shot brush a post. Lewis Hall has shone at left back for Howe’s team in recent weeks but he will not relish watching replays of Gomes zipping past him.
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Pereira introduced Matheus Cunha at the outset of the second half and a forward newly liberated from suspension seemed anxious to make up for lost time. Yet despite Cunha, whose slick touch and insidious movement suggested he probably should have started, swiftly drawing a save from Martin Dubravka and subsequently going close from another decent chance, only Santiago Bueno’s block came between Anthony Gordon and a second Newcastle goal.
There was though no one capable of preventing Isak scoring his second goal of the evening. It involved another stellar defence splitting Guimarães pass and a seamless swivel on the Swede’s part before the ball was stroked past Sá.
Next Isak showed his selfless side, his cross permitting Gordon’s first-time strike to finally strip any remnants of swagger from Wolves’ step once it had survived a VAR review for an offside. By way of emphasising that this was not the visitors’ night, Bueno had a late “goal” bundled beyond Dubravka following a corner disallowed for handball following another examination by VAR.
Most of a near capacity ground were more concerned with the question as to whether Newcastle can make it a perfect 10 wins in a row when Bournemouth visit Tyneside on Saturday.
