EVERY team can be excused an off-day, and it says much about the quality of Newcastle United’s play this season that we have made it to the middle of April before the Magpies have produced their first completely below-par performance of the campaign.

Newcastle were comprehensively outplayed at Aston Villa, but their opponents are arguably the most in-form team in the Premier League at the moment, having won seven of their last eight matches, and Tottenham’s surprise home defeat to Bournemouth means the Magpies’ failure to take anything from Villa Park has not inflicted too much damage on their hopes of making it to the Champions League. With eight games of the season to go, Newcastle remain ensconced in the top four.

Yet when Eddie Howe assesses his side’s no-show on Saturday, he will have to accept that it did not come completely out of the blue. Newcastle were every bit as poor in the first half at Brentford seven days earlier, but turned things around when Howe’s changes transformed his side’s performance level in the second half.

One week on, and there was no such recovery, so the question that will be exercising Howe’s thoughts as he looks ahead to Sunday’s crucial home game with Tottenham is whether three of the last four halves of football are a blip, or whether they are the first signs of more deep-rooted problems that have the potential to scupper Newcastle’s European hopes in the next month-and-a-half.

“We didn’t represent ourselves in the best way that we can,” admitted Howe, after his side crashed to their heaviest defeat of the season. “As far as I can think, it’s the first time that’s happened in a long time, but it’s part of the game and it can happen at any stage.

“If you look at the consistency we’ve delivered for a long period of time, where we’ve been in our basic mindset and how we approach the games, and what we’ve given the games, then we’ve been very, very good. Here, we were just a level off, but now it’s up to us to respond properly. The focus now is on what our response will be. We need to make sure we’re not that team again.”

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Newcastle were second best in every area of the pitch at the weekend, but given their defensive strength for the vast majority of the season, it was the ease with which Villa’s forwards picked them apart that was the most surprising, and alarming, part of the afternoon.

Dan Burn’s limitations as a left-back were exposed on a number of occasions, with the repositioned centre-half struggling to deal with the speed and fluidity of Villa’s attacks, while on the other flank, Kieran Trippier was repeatedly caught out of position as Villa exploited the gap between the England international and Fabian Schar.

Time and time again, either Ollie Watkins or Jacob Ramsey pulled into Villa’s inside-left channel before cutting into the area to get a shot away, and while Trippier’s forward forays are a key part of Newcastle’s attacking arsenal, on days like Saturday, he needs to remember that his primary function in the team is to defend.

Just 30 seconds had gone when Watkins broke into the left-hand side of area to drive a shot against the base of the post – it was the second game in a row that Newcastle’s opponents had struck the woodwork in the opening minute of the game – and the chances kept on coming down the Magpies’ right flank.

Villa also dominated the heart of midfield, where the absence of Sean Longstaff unbalanced Newcastle. Bruno Guimaraes was forced to play as the anchor of the midfield three, and was therefore positioned much deeper than ideal, preventing him from being a creative force. Howe revealed after the game that Longstaff’s absence was enforced as a bout of tonsilitis meant he had been unable to train last week, but the lack of a like-for-like replacement highlighted Newcastle’s need for a top-class holding midfielder in the summer. Had Declan Rice been playing in a black-and-white shirt at the weekend, perhaps things would have been a little different.

As it was, Villa opened the scoring 11 minutes in when Watkins’ cushioned header fell for Ramsey, whose brother, Aaron, is currently on loan at Middlesbrough, and the Villa midfielder drilled a clinical finish past Nick Pope.

Watkins had what he thought was a second Villa goal ruled out for a narrow offside, but in front of the watching Gareth Southgate, the England hopeful ran riot all afternoon and did not have to wait long to double his side’s lead.

It was a goal that summed up Newcastle’s failings, with Alex Moreno afforded far too much space as he delivered a cross from the Villa left and Watkins turning adeptly away from Burn before sweeping home.

Howe called for the cavalry in the second half, but unlike at Brentford, where his changes turned the game on its head, the rot had well and truly set in by the time the pack was shuffled at Villa.

A third goal felt inevitable, and it arrived with seven minutes left as Emi Buendia pulled the ball back from close to the byline and the irrepressible Watkins dispatched a first-time finish into the net.