Newcastle deserve credit first. The opening exchanges at St James' Park were about as good as a Premier League side can play. Joe Willock finished off a Harvey Barnes ball inside three minutes, and Barnes turned provider again minutes later as Lewis Hall drilled a finish into the bottom corner. Two goals inside the opening ten, both created by the same player, against a Hull side that had arrived unbeaten in four and conceding almost nothing. That wasn't a fluke start, it was a team executing a game plan close to perfection.
By Sofascore's numbers, Newcastle controlled the first half comfortably, and it's no surprise Willock walked away as the best player on the pitch by both the algorithm and the fan vote. He was the difference.
My issue, and it's one Newcastle fans should sit with rather than dismiss as early-season noise, is that this team keeps finding ways to make matches tense that shouldn't be tense. Jaissle's side had drawn 2-2 in each of their last two league matches before this, against Liverpool and Bournemouth, and here they were 2-0 up inside ten minutes with a Wissa penalty saved on top of that, and Hull still had a real puncher's chance in the final quarter of the game, right down to Tim Iroegbunam's close-range effort that came inches from tying it. A team this good going forward shouldn't need its goalkeeper to bail it out repeatedly in the same month.
Jaissle's own explanation, that Newcastle are carrying a heavy injury list and that the changes forced on him in the second half made life harder, is fair. I don't think this is a coaching failure so much as a squad-depth problem, and until it's fixed, every big Newcastle lead is going to come with an asterisk. This was billed, fairly, as the response to Leeds, and by the first-half performance alone it was exactly that. My worry is that the response to a bad week keeps ending in white-knuckle finishes rather than comfortable ones.
As for Hull: this ends their unbeaten start to life back in the top flight, and it will sting given how well they'd defended coming in. But I'd push back on reading too much into one result against a Newcastle side that came out of the blocks about as fast as a Premier League team can. Hull got a goal back through a substitute finish that kissed the post on its way in, and they finished the game camped in Newcastle's box. Given where this club was playing not so long ago, a spirited defeat away at St James' Park against a team that started 2-0 up inside ten minutes shouldn't shake anyone's confidence in Sergej Jakirovic's group.
The headline from this one is Willock, deservedly. But the more interesting story going forward is whether Newcastle can turn these fast, brilliant starts into results that don't require nerves of steel to see out.
