Wolves battle to goalless stalemate at home to Newcastle
By Sunny Badwal, Press Association
Wolves extended their unbeaten run in the Premier League to four matches after they battled to a goalless draw with Newcastle at Molineux.
Wolves fans arrived at the stadium without their usual fear of losing games – following their recent good run – and their team did not allow Eddie Howe’s side to register a shot on target in a low key first period.
Jose Sa remained untroubled in the Wolves goal before he was needed late on to keep out Bruno Guimaraes and Joelinton, which was needed to earn his side an eighth point of the campaign.
Newcastle have found life quite tough away from St James’ Park and another laboured performance in the final third means they have still won just two games on the road this season and missed the chance to climb into the top six.
Wolves remain 14 points adrift of safety but another encouraging performance and a second clean sheet of the season will leave Rob Edwards plenty to be encouraged about.
The visitors were largely in control from kick-off and had a couple of sightings of goal through Nick Woltemade, who put a pair of headers off target, both summed up his form in front of goal recently.
Referee Sam Barrott was not warming to the home faithful with a couple of questionable decisions that went in favour of the visitors including Hugo Bueno’s tackle on Sandro Tonali, from which he appeared to win the ball.
Wolves tested Magpies goalkeeper Nick Pope for the first time in the 28th minute as a long throw-in bounced to Mateus Mane, who turned and aimed a tame volley into the hands of the England international.
The hosts had clearly found a new wind of confidence following their recent upturn in form and began to get themselves further up the pitch.
A corner landed at the feet of Yerson Mosquera, who rolled a chance straight to Pope before Bueno fired over on the stroke of half-time.
Newcastle were not shy of putting a cross into the box. Woltemade was the target of many but he was unable to connect several times and his frustrating afternoon was brought to an end when he was replaced by Yoane Wissa in the 65th minute.
The visitors started to press Wolves further onto their own goal line but were still unable to get anybody on the end of the crosses into the box, this time Anthony Elanga’s ball flew across the six-yard box, begging to be tapped in.
Newcastle thought they opened the scoring after they were given a free-kick on the edge of the box, with Kieran Trippier’s attempt beating the diving Sa but hitting the wrong side of the net which many fans thought had gone in.
The Wolves goalkeeper then needed to be alert to make a smart double save with four minutes left to play.
Bruno powered one off the palms of Sa and he was able to keep out Joelinton on the follow up which brought Newcastle’s three-game league winning streak to an end.
