Tuesday night’s dramatic victory over West Brom saw the Magpies through to the last eight of the FA Cup for the first time in more than a decade, and after a four-game run without a goal in the top flight, Allan Saint-Maximin’s late strike proved enough to see off the Saints and move Steve Bruce’s side eight points clear of the Premier League drop zone.
It was starting to look as though the Magpies might run out of time at St. Mary’s. An incident-packed first half saw the Saints’ Moussa Djenepo dismissed for a poor challenge on Isaac Hayden and United’s Matt Ritchie miss from the spot, with the visitors squandering a string of opportunities in between.
But with ten minutes to play, Saint-Maximin robbed the hosts’ Yan Valery before prodding home a valuable winner, allowing United to breathe a collective sigh of relief.
“Considering we missed some great chances in the first half, you sort of think that maybe you’ve missed your chance to capitalise on them having ten men,” Rose told nufc.co.uk. “But I think people need to realise that it’s not easy playing against ten men. It’s another clean sheet and it’s been a great week for the football club; we’re three games unbeaten, we’ve had two clean sheets in a row and it’s a great win. It’s one step closer to safety.
“I didn’t see the tackle (that led to Djenepo’s red card) but, from my point of view, it’s the waiting game; it’s a bit of suspense and you just hope the decision goes your way. It’s gone for us today and we’re thankful. We’re over the moon that we managed to capitalise, though it’s probably the hardest chance out of the lot that we’ve had today. Overall, it’s been a massive week.”
Head coach Steve Bruce shifted formation coming into a significant eight-day spell, deploying a 4-2-3-1 formation against Burnley at St. James’ Park a week ago and sticking to the system against the Baggies and the Saints.
Rose has been encouraged by the Magpies’ response, and the England international was swift to set his sights on picking up the victory that, he feels, would rubber-stamp the club’s Premier League status for another season.
“Against Burnley we restricted them to very few chances, and on Tuesday against West Brom it was the best performance since I’ve been here,” he said. “We looked so comfortable, fluid, and we created chances. We ended up conceding two sloppy goals – we know that – but there were a lot of positives to take out of that game. Today we’ve kept a clean sheet, we’ve kept the belief and once we scored we showed great maturity to keep the ball.
“We’ve had to change formation and I think we’ve dealt with it immensely. I’m looking forward now to hopefully getting one more win, and then maybe we can relax and sort of enjoy our football, instead of looking over your shoulder and hoping that other teams have lost.”
