Newcastle Jets suffer a frustrating home defeat at the hands of Western United at McDonald Jones Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
For the home team, it was a game where the score line doesn’t paint an entirely accurate picture of the football that was played on the day, with important saves from Jamie Young keeping the Jets at bay early on.
Simple errors let Western United into the game, and while the attacking output was there for Newcastle, it was a below average display of finishing that hampered them.
Western United put some early pressure onto themselves with a loose Jamie Young pass finding Jaushua Sotirio open in the opening seconds of the match.
Instead of taking an early shot with Young still off his line, he tried working the ball in, but the move came to an end when the final pass rolled across the face of the open goal.
To further Newcastle’s woes, they would go onto concede just a minute later when Joshua Risdon put the ball in from the left-hand side. Jets keeper Jack Duncan couldn’t make his mind up, rooted in no-man’s land, which left Noah Botic with a simple nod home to open the scoring.
Newcastle didn’t let the early mistake rattle them however and pushed for a reply straight away. They created threatening chances but Young was able to pull off three top-tier saves in the space of five minutes to maintain the away side’s advantage.
Botic doubled Western United’s lead coming after another long spell of Newcastle possession. A ball was slipped in just out of the reach of Carl Jenkinson, which allowed Connor Pain to feed it across to Botic for an easy tap-in.
Newcastle weren’t out of the game yet, being rewarded for their relentless waves of attacks with a potentially contentious penalty for a handball just minutes after conceding the second goal.
Beka Mikeltadze slotted it home and it was game on, with the crowd surging in anticipation of the comeback.
The second half got underway in fiery fashion with Matt Jurman picking up a yellow card for a challenge into the back of Botic.
Duncan looked to be the only Newcastle player to not have recovered mentally from the mistakes in the first half, as a few stray passes at the back and one miss-control of a back pass that nearly found its way in kept Western United hungry.
Western United continued their aerial dominance in the match, finding a third goal through Tongo Doumbia who latched on to a long ball from Neil Kilkenny and headed past Duncan.
They should’ve had a fourth in quick succession, but Pain couldn’t get his body in the right position to put home a ball from one metre out.
It was another case of Newcastle dominating large parts of the match without anything to show from it.
This result sees Newcastle’s chance at matching their longest unbeaten streak ended, stopping one short at six in a row.
The Jets do stay in contention for finals football, however a win in this game would’ve put them in fourth, with Sydney FC in one place above on the ladder losing their fixture to remain level on points.
Western United put an end to their recent three game losing streak with victory, but still remain some way off the top six.
Feature Image Credit: Newcastle Jets
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