Alan Pardew’s assertion that his Newcastle United squad is strong enough to cope with a European campaign will be fully tested after they qualified for the group stage of the Europa League with a routine win over Atromitos, but lost Ryan Taylor to a serious knee injury.
The home side were looking comfortable, but they should have lost goalkeeper Tim Krul to a red card when he spilt a shot from Denis Epstein and then brought down Marinaldo Da Silva. The striker, though, was booked for a dive and Krul escaped, even though replays showed he had hooked Da Silva’s ankle.
Had that been called correctly, Newcastle would have been in trouble and having gone close to a second goal through Fabricio Coloccini, they were almost sucker-punched, Elini Dimoutsos missing a great chance to make the scores level on aggregate.