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Manchester City remain in search of the relentlessness of their title triumphs under Pep Guardiola but this scrappy win still moves them into fifth.
Missing is a killer touch before goal, with Sergio Agüero being nursed back to full fitness. Newcastle were routed here last season and would have been again if Ferran Torres and Raheem Sterling, in particular, had been cooler-eyed finishers.
Kyle Walker’s positive coronavirus test enforced Guardiola to draft in Nathan Aké, his sole change from Saturday’s 1-0 win at Southampton, while Steve Bruce hoped for a far better display than the one that led to Newcastle being knocked out of the Carabao Cup by Brentford in midweek.
This Boxing Day contest kicked off in driving rain and featured the visitors having a generous share of the ball. Miguel Almirón threatened along the left, while Raheem Sterling had to snuff out a counterattack.
Yet as is often the case City were soon to strike with terrifying pace. Kevin De Bruyne rolled a pass from left to right to João Cancelo whose slide-rule ball had Sterling in before a wall of zebra-striped shirts. After teasing these defenders, the No 7 tapped sideways to Ilkay Gündogan and he smashed home from near-in.
This had taken 14 minutes. In last season’s 5-0 hammering of Newcastle in the corresponding fixture, City’s opener came after 10 minutes: here was an unwanted similarity that might prove the worst augury for Bruce’s men and when De Bruyne floated a cross-shot at goal moments later Karl Darlow had to scramble to keep out a second.
City were in muscular mode. Ferran Torres, the No 9 with Gabriel Jesus also a Covid-positive enforced absence, received from Aké deep inside his half and ran 70 yards, only his tame shot saving Newcastle.
Yet despite the lead, Guardiola was unhappy. For below-par passes both John Stones and Rodri were given a vocal volley and City’s profligacy troubled the manager. While Torres’s hooked ball that had De Bruyne sprinting clear was received better by the Catalan the Belgian’s dilly-dallying before a poor effort that Darlow repelled was again greeted unfavourably.
As the break approached Sterling’s close-range shot did, at least, trouble Darlow and presaged the first of two City corners. But Newcastle ended the half with three of their own: the middle of these had City in disarray and while the home team answered with a further one, Bruce’s men wandered off at the interval still in the game.
A miscontrol by De Bruyne that ceded possession early in the second half suggested that City were still not quite as slick as they like to be. If a Rúben Dias pass that went straight to Jacob Murphy reinforced the impression, further disjointedness ensued when a De Bruyne chipped free-kick was headed across goal by Stones when the defender should have aimed beyond Darlow.
Newcastle’s vague gameplan to cling on and nick an equaliser somehow was underlined by a Joelinton snapshot that, 51 minutes in, was their first on target. And this strategy appeared to be in tatters when a Cancelo cross was steered by Federico Fernández into Torres’s path and he made no mistake to make it 2-0.
It was nearly 3-0 when Bernardo Silva hit Darlow’s left post, though Sterling should have scored with an attempt he miskicked that eventually went to the Portuguese.
City looked to have a third from Agüero, on as a late replacement for Torres, only for Darlow to save at point-blank range from the No 10.
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