In contrast, this was a very different final day for Newcastle.<\/p>\n
Whereas Howe’s side were playing for a place in the Champions League a year ago, 12 months on they already knew they were out of the race to qualify for Europe.<\/p>\n
However, Howe had warned before the trip to Craven Cottage that “this game will live long with us” going into the summer break.<\/p>\n
Those thoughts will not be positive and this defeat will be especially bitter given rivals Sunderland qualified for the Europa League as Howe’s side were losing meekly.<\/p>\n
With an eye on next season, Howe changed systems once more, fielding a back five and curiously taking Harvey Barnes – who had scored two goals in his previous two games – and the departing Kieran Trippier out of the side.<\/p>\n
The extra centre-back – in the shape of Dan Burn – should in theory have given Newcastle added stability, but this leaky side have only kept a single clean sheet since February for a reason.<\/p>\n
They were far too casual when Kevin stepped up to take the free-kick that led to Diop’s opener.<\/p>\n
Joe Willock, who was a late addition to the starting line-up after Sandro Tonali was injured in the warm-up, nonchalantly stuck out a leg only to join a number of his sleepy team-mates in watching Diop head home.<\/p>\n
As good as Cairney’s second was, no-one was close enough to him and that gave the midfielder the time he needed to unleash a rocket past Nick Pope.<\/p>\n
If this side are to bounce back next season, they desperately need to rediscover some semblance of solidity – and more besides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In contrast, this was a very different final day for Newcastle. Whereas Howe’s side were playing for a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-662896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662896","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=662896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}