Howe was certainly not getting carried away.<\/p>\n
But the Newcastle head coach will have taken immense encouragement from the contribution of his forwards.<\/p>\n
Newcastle have relied on record signing Nick Woltemade, who scored his side’s first goal against Wolves, Arsenal, Union Saint-Gilloise and Brighton in recent weeks, and whose link-up play was again eye-catching on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
But when this game was on a knife-edge, and St James’ Park was tense, Newcastle needed someone else to step up and ease the goalscoring burden.<\/p>\n
And Gordon did so when he side-footed home at the back post following Jacob Murphy’s ball across in the 32nd minute.<\/p>\n
Murphy had been recalled in place of summer signing Anthony Elanga – and this was a reminder why.<\/p>\n
His teasing deliveries set up so many goals for former team-mate Alexander Isak last season and Gordon benefited from such an assist against Benfica.<\/p>\n
Gordon, in the process, became the first Newcastle player ever to score in three successive Champions League games, while only Alan Shearer has more goals in the competition for the club.<\/p>\n
“It means everything, but I need to get more,” Gordon told TNT Sport. “My ambition doesn’t stop there.”<\/p>\n
This was a crucial contribution, though, as Benfica manager Mourinho needed no reminding.<\/p>\n
His forward Dodi Lukebakio had earlier hit the post and forced Nick Pope into a fine save when the match was goalless.<\/p>\n
“St James’ was quiet,” Mourinho said. “The fans felt that the game was not easy. They felt Benfica was much closer than Newcastle to score.<\/p>\n
“They brought their enthusiasm in set-pieces, which is normal. When you have a team of giants, you know every set-piece, throw-in, lateral free-kick, corner is a dramatic moment for the opponent – and it was the only moment that they brought that enthusiasm and that pressure to the opponent.<\/p>\n
“We felt very comfortable in the first half.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Howe was certainly not getting carried away. But the Newcastle head coach will have taken immense encouragement from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-216822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}