A huge roar went up inside St James’ when nine minutes of stoppage time were added on. Understandably so.<\/p>\n
It was just last week that Newcastle scored two scarcely believable late goals to defeat Leeds United in a 4-3 classic.<\/p>\n
The home support dared to dream once more – but there was to be no grandstand finish for the hosts this time.<\/p>\n
This time Cherki landed what felt like a mortal blow in the 98th minute as Newcastle supporters streamed out.<\/p>\n
What a contrast to the scenes before kick-off.<\/p>\n
The home fans certainly believed as a huge flag display depicted the Wembley arch above a banner, which read “Gannin’ Alang Wembley Way”.<\/p>\n
The noise was raucous.<\/p>\n
Trafford, who turned down a move to Newcastle to return to Manchester last summer, was booed mercilessly throughout. Throw-ins and corners were celebrated. The roar that greeted Semenyo’s goal being disallowed was deafening in the second half.<\/p>\n
Howe knew his side had to feed off it and take something back to Manchester next month.<\/p>\n
There was a different dynamic to this game, as a result, compared to previous semi-finals when Newcastle went away first, in 2023 and 2025, before finishing the job off at a febrile St James’.<\/p>\n
But this was ultimately a case of what might have been for Newcastle on a night they fired a rare blank.<\/p>\n
An almighty challenge now awaits.<\/p>\n
Newcastle have only ever won once at the Etihad, and Howe’s side have yet to even score in the stadium since he took charge in 2021.<\/p>\n
This team are going to have to finally overcome that hoodoo \u2013 and some \u2013 to return to Wembley.<\/p>\n
“We’re still alive,” Howe said. “We’re still in there fighting. It’s very difficult to turn it around but it’s still possible and football can conjure up some magical moments. <\/p>\n
“Last year we were on the other side of this scoreline. We went to Arsenal, won 2-0 in that game and we felt it was still very much alive. <\/p>\n
“It was all about the next goal in the tie. I think that’s going to be the case in this one. If we can get the next goal, we are still very much in it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A huge roar went up inside St James’ when nine minutes of stoppage time were added on. Understandably…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-405662","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}