NEWCASTLE picked up their first point of the season as they claimed a goalless draw at Cardiff City despite the second-half dismissal of Isaac Hayden, but they could have had so much more, with Kenedy missing a stoppage-time penalty.

The visitors were struggling to hide their dejection as they trudged from the field at the Cardiff City Stadium, so what were the main talking points to emerge from their trip to South Wales?


LASCELLES BACK TO HIS BEST

Jamaal Lascelles had looked uncharacteristically shaky in the opening-day defeat to Tottenham, but the Newcastle skipper was back to his best as Cardiff launched their anticipated aerial bombardment.

Having played plenty of football in the Championship, Lascelles is not going to be fazed by a physical test, and he marked Kenneth Zohore out of the game as he won a series of towering headers.

The 24-year-old missed out on England’s World Cup squad, but with Gary Cahill surely nearing international retirement, he must be in Gareth Southgate’s thinking for next month’s games with Spain and Switzerland. Michael Keane has started the season well at Everton, but Lascelles has to be close to a maiden international call-up.


DID NEWCASTLE SIGN THE WRONG MURPHY?

When Jacob Murphy joined his twin brother, Josh, on the pitch in the second half, the pair become only the second set of twins to line up against each other in a Premier League game, following in the footsteps of Michael and Will Keane, who played for Burnley and Hull respectively.

Newcastle paid £10m to sign Jacob from Norwich in the summer of 2017, but the winger has struggled to make much of an impact on Tyneside.

Cardiff shelled out £11m to prise Josh from Carrow Road this summer, and he was a constant threat at the weekend, repeatedly troubling Javier Manquillo in the first half in particular. Might Newcastle end up concluding they bought the wrong twin?


TIME TO TURN TO RONDON

Having watched Joselu score against Spurs on the opening day, Rafael Benitez opted to keep the Spaniard in his starting line-up at Cardiff. It was not a move that paid dividends.

Joselu struggled to hold up the ball against the imposing Sol Bamba and Sean Morrison, and rarely looked like causing a problem in the final third. As a result, he will be extremely fortunate to keep his place again when Newcastle host Chelsea on Sunday.

Salomon Rondon didn’t make it on to the field as Isaac Hayden’s dismissal forced Benitez into a second-half reshuffle, but the Venezuelan will surely make his first Magpies start in six days’ time. The time for being patient with him has come to an end.


EMPTY SEATS IN THE AWAY END

Getting from Newcastle to Cardiff for a lunch-time kick-off is hardly an easy feat, and Sky’s schedulers have not exactly made things simple for Magpies supporters in the opening month of the season.

Nevertheless, it was still a surprise that Newcastle failed to sell out their allocation of 3,000 tickets for their opening away game of the season, with a section of the away end containing 500-or-so seats remaining empty.

Have some of Newcastle’s die-hard fans decided that enough is enough in the wake of yet another summer of under-investment from owner Mike Ashley? Time will tell. Despite the protests that preceded the opening-day game with Tottenham, there is no sign of crowds dropping off at St James’ Park, but the sight of so many empty seats in a Newcastle away end was unusual.


CARDIFF LOOK SET FOR A SEASON OF STRUGGLE

If Newcastle’s performance was far from impressive, then Cardiff’s was even worse. Ineffective when their opponents had 11 men on the pitch, the Bluebirds were no more threatening after Hayden was dismissed.

Having had their fingers burned when they were last in the top-flight, the Cardiff board resisted the temptation to match the spending of fellow newcomers Wolves and Fulham this summer. As a result, Neil Warnock finds himself presiding over a team of players who would look more at home in the Championship.

Warnock has achieved some remarkable feats during his extensive managerial career – keeping this Cardiff team in the top-flight in the next nine months would unquestionably top the lot.