Newcastle United extended their unbeaten run to nine matches as they beat Southampton 2-1 away from home on Thursday.

The Magpies struggled in the early stages of the game as Armando Broja missed a big chance and Che Adams smashed the underside of the bar either side of the opening goal from Stuart Armstrong.

Eddie Howe's side rallied, though, and found their equaliser through Chris Wood as he nodded in a sublime cross from Jonjo Shelvey.

January signing Bruno Guimaraes scored the winner in the second half as he brilliantly flicked the ball into the roof of the net with the back of his foot after a smart header across the box from Dan Burn.

Out of his depth

Along with securing the three points for the Magpies, Bruno's goal bailed out a poor performance at right-back from Emil Krafth.

Ian Wright previously criticised the defender as being "out of his depth" at Premier League level and that is exactly what he looked like in this display as he left a lot to be desired at both ends of the pitch at St. Mary's. 

Defensively, he was weak for Newcastle. As per SofaScore, he lost a whopping 80% of his duels (8/10) and was dribbled past as many times as he completed tackles - twice.

This shows that he struggled badly with Southampton's physicality and was unable to dominate his man throughout the match as the Saints looked to take advantage of his weakness at full-back.

Thankfully, for him, his teammates' strong performance - and Southampton's finishing at times - meant that his poor defending did not cost them the result in the end.

On the ball, he failed to impress. As per SofaScore, the £37k-per-week dud only completed 18 passes in 89 minutes at a success rate of 64%.

He also failed with all of his attempted crosses and dribbles as he ended the game without a key pass to his name. This shows that he offered no threat in the Saints half as he did not provide any quality in possession.

In the end, though, he was not needed in the final third because of Bruno's brilliance. However, Krafth's disappointing showing would have cost the Magpies on another day if they were not so clinical with their own chances and Southampton were better in front of goal themselves, so he will be counting himself lucky for now.

Bruno bailed him out this time but that will not always be the case...

AND in other news, Sold for £90k, now worth 6900% more: NUFC had a shocker over "unstoppable" 6ft machine...