Osula and Barnes’ second-half burst sees Newcastle pile pressure on lacklustre Palace

The first half was one of the worst 45 minutes of football in Premier League history. The pass completion rate was a meagre 72.8%, although it felt lower. There were only two shots on target. The sun kept popping out from behind the clouds to take a look, and then going back in again, appalled. And the really bad news for Crystal Palace is that, for them, that was the good bit.

Newcastle were much improved after the break. Will Osula touched in a Jacob Murphy cross two minutes after half-time, Joe Willock had an effort ruled out for a marginal offside five minutes later, and Harvey Barnes completed a slick passing move six minutes after that. A smattering of boos from the home fans made clear what everybody already knew. Quarter of an hour of proper football had been enough to win the game, and that leaves Pierre Sage under significant pressure.

To an extent he is a victim of circumstance. Palace are listing after summer sales, Maxence Lacroix and Daniel Muñoz joining the familiar exodus. Two wins in eight league games is troubling, particularly when one of them was as freakish as the previous home game against Nottingham Forest, when they were outplayed for much of the first half and inexplicably went in ahead at half-time. Nobody could have drawn much confidence from that, and the shellacking they sustained at Brighton last week is the kind of thing that might have got a manager more than a few weeks in the job the sack.

There were a couple of early chances. Daichi Kamada sliced his finish after a promising run by Dwight McNeil. Jean-Philippe Mateta, so devastating when Palace beat Newcastle in April, dragged a shot wide. McNeil rolled a low pass through a vacant six-yard box after good work from Yéremy Pino. But that golden age of incident soon passed.

By the quarter hour an eerie silence had already fallen over Selhurst Park. It was not just that nothing was happening, it was that there was no expectation of anything happening. In part it was the blustery wind on a chilly autumnal afternoon, but there was also the sense that these are two fundamentally ordinary sides, low on confidence, coming to terms with new managers, neither of whom can have a huge amount of confidence they will still be in their roles in a couple of months. No weather conditions can explain why so many basic passes were misplaced, why the ball spent so much time bouncing aimlessly around the centre-circle, or why shots kept being struck into players a couple of feet away.

And that is the other worry for Palace. This wasn’t a defeat to a high-flyer or a team in form. After a mildly promising start to the season, anxiety had begun to set in for Newcastle. They were booed off after last week’s defeat at home to Aston Villa, their third defeat in four. Losing to an improving Villa in itself is no disgrace; the issue was more the manner of it. Had it worked, the deployment of Dan Burn as an emergency centre-forward would have been hailed as inspired thinking; but it did not work – and, really, how likely was it to? – and so it looked like desperation.

The appeals for patience are reasonable enough: Mattias Jaissle has been in charge for only three months and replacing a manager who had been in charge for five years is rarely a straightforward process, even if the squad has not lost its three best players. But at the same time £260m was spent on eight signings, of whom only Nico González has made much of an impact so far, although Amar Dedic was solid enough here.

Burn, restored to the back four alongside Fabian Schär ahead of Sven Botman and Malick Thiaw, was immense, untroubled by the physicality of Mateta, of whom it may charitably be said that he is not back to his best after injury. The defence generally looked assured, while González was pretty much the only player in that chaotic first half who had any sense that some semblance of shape may be desirable. This is a squad that is still taking shape, with the new signings presumably to be introduced gradually but, ultimately, Newcastle should be comfortably mid-table.

It’s hard to have such confidence in Palace. Lukas Hornicek did have to make two saves around the mid-point of the second half, first from an Adam Wharton curler and then a long-range drive from Darío Osorio, but there was very little threat, very little imagination and very little quality from them. Newcastle were far from brilliant, but that 15-minute spell after half-time was more than enough to win the game comfortably. There is discontent at Palace, and it is justified.