Isak on target as Newcastle ease to Carabao Cup win over rotated Chelsea

Hope is alive and kicking at Newcastle after all. Just as Eddie Howe’s players seemed to be sliding towards mediocrity, a place in the Carabao Cup’s last eight has changed an entire narrative.

Quite apart from creating the tantalising possibility of securing a long craved piece of silverware and, with it, a backdoor route into Europe, this cup run is helping to camouflage the offstage tensions that have contributed to Newcastle’s latterly disappointing Premier League form.

“Our energy, quality and attitude was spot-on,” said a relieved Howe, whose side will host Brentford in the quarter-final in mid-December. “We needed a performance and a result and we got both. We feel a lot better about ourselves after that.”

It helped that Chelsea’s radically revamped team suggested Enzo Maresca was not exactly prioritising this competition. It seemed somehow significant that he left Cole Palmer on the bench throughout while Nicolas Jackson was nowhere to be seen.

While Howe opted for gentle rotation, making five alterations to the XI that started the 2-1 Premier League defeat at Stamford Bridge on Sunday, Maresca changed Chelsea’s entire lineup. Not that he appeared to harbour any real regrets. “If we analyse the performance, I think the changes I made worked,” the Chelsea manager said. “If we analyse the result it didn’t. But I thought we controlled the game for long periods.”

Perhaps, though, such a wholesale 11‑man churn was responsible for the early moment of kamikaze-style visiting defensive chaos that prefaced Alexander Isak crossing and Joelinton spurning a close-range sitter, after miscuing an attempted right-foot shot.

Yet if Chelsea were repeatedly self-destructive at one end, their counterattacking pace ensured they remained capable of endangering the home defence and it took a timely block from Sandro Tonali’s to divert Renato Veiga’s goalbound shot.

As Maresca’s team began looking increasingly, if deceptively, comfortable in possession, Howe urged his players to press their guests harder and higher. This policy paid dividends when an amalgam of overconfidence and casualness as Chelsea’s Benoît Badiashile and Veiga attempted to pass out from the back was met by ruthless pressing from Joelinton and TonaliOnce Joelinton’s challenge had stopped Veiga in his tracks, Tonali pushed the ball into Isak’s path and the latterly out of sorts Sweden striker delighted in passing it into the back of the net.

After five Premier League games without a win, Howe needed a cup boost and his smile duly widened as Axel Disasi could only help Joe Willock’s header home after the midfielder’s connection with Isak’s menacing delivery.

Although Nick Pope was required to save smartly to deny João Félix, Maresca’s insistence that his players continued to attempt playing the ball around at the back was provoking the sort of untrammelled optimism recently all too conspicuous by its absence in the Gallowgate End.

Chelsea were walking, repeatedly, into a classic Howe trap and the only mystery was why Chelsea’s manager did not instruct his charges to change tactics. After all, in the last round here, AFC Wimbledon kept Newcastle extremely quiet in open play with a no‑nonsense low block and the sort of long‑ball attacking game that, on another night, might just have prompted a shock.

Instead the second half had barely begun before Maresca’s goalkeeper, Filip Jörgensen, was forced to dribble around the onrushing Anthony Gordon deep in his six-yard box after attempting a rather reckless one-two with a defender.

While Chelsea might have reduced the deficit had Lloyd Kelly, enjoying a very decent game after making a rare start in the heart of Newcastle’s defence, not somehow blocked Christopher Nkunku’s shot, they struggled to cope with Willock.

Like Kelly, he was making the most of the chance to start a game and Maresca’s team certainly struggled to cope with Willock’s ability to glide, persistently, 30 or 40 yards across the pitch.

Chelsea had little option but to live dangerously and Maresca duly ordered Marc Cucurella to increasingly vacate his nominal left‑back berth and turn the visiting formation from 4-2-3-1 to 3-2-4-1 by operating as an extra midfielder. If this ploy sometimes offered Newcastle opportunity it also proved capable of stretching them to the limit at times.

Yet if Howe’s defence were spared as, much to Maresca’s disgust, Félix shot wide with the goal at his mercy, Sean Longstaff saw a headed “goal” disallowed for offside and Will Osula, on as a substitute, hit a post. “Despite all Chelsea’s changes we beat a very good team,” Howe said. “Have no doubt about that.”

• This article was amended on 30 October 2024 – due to a picture agency error, the original main image caption misidentified a Newcastle player. It has been replaced with a picture of the scorer of the opening goal, Alexander Isak