Yet Newcastle found a way to climb it.<\/p>\n
Following some strong words at half-time, the visitors rallied after the break and won a penalty courtesy of Nick Woltemade aggressively pressing Leverkusen goalkeeper Mark Flekken.<\/p>\n
And after equalising from the spot, Gordon then went on to set up substitute Lewis Miley’s header to put Newcastle in front.<\/p>\n
However, another familiar issue reared its head.<\/p>\n
Despite taking the lead in the 74th minute, Newcastle were unable to see out the game.<\/p>\n
This side have dropped more points from winning positions – 11 – than any other team in the Premier League.<\/p>\n
They have failed to win four of their past five away games in all competitions despite taking the lead in all of them at some stage.<\/p>\n
Newcastle may have hit the upright through substitute Jacob Murphy after going in front, but Howe’s side began to drop deep against Leverkusen late on, consciously or not.<\/p>\n
And Grimaldo’s clever dummy took Newcastle’s midfield out of the game before Leverkusen’s talisman levelled.<\/p>\n
It was a familiar story for Howe.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think it’s ever a case of sitting back and absorbing pressure,” the Newcastle head coach said. <\/p>\n
“That’s not number one in our aim, but you need to do whatever it takes to win. Sometimes that is par for the course, that’s what you have to do.”<\/p>\n
Newcastle remain on course for at least a play-off spot and are only a couple of points off the automatic qualification places for the last 16. <\/p>\n
But Howe’s team cannot afford to let history repeat itself when they host a PSV side who are starting to hit form, on 21 January, before a trip to the Parc des Princes to take on holders Paris St-Germain a week later.<\/p>\n
“We have it all to prove,” Howe added. “The two games we have are very difficult games but I believe in the group. Wherever we go, if we’re near our best, we can win.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yet Newcastle found a way to climb it. Following some strong words at half-time, the visitors rallied after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-338294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}