Steve McClaren surprised as Newcastle United booed off after Aston Villa draw

It sounds familiar. It sounds ‘typical Newcastle’. But the Magpies being jeered at the full-time whistle, for once, felt a bit unfair. There is a long line of people willing to knock Newcastle at every opportunity, and while a draw against a side with only six points on the table may normally be grounds for concern, there were mitigating circumstances.

So why were there audible boos as the players trudged off? Was it the default setting, that Newcastle fans are so used to failure that it’s either black or white. A win is applauded and cheered and anything but is jeered? There are shades of grey. And perhaps those who did choose to boo Steve McClaren’s side may be a little embarrassed this morning.

The weather – heavy rainfall before and during the Saturday evening game turned the St James’ Park pitch into a quagmire – proved to be a leveller, and Aston Villa, to their credit, took full advantage and managed to cancel out Fabricio Coloccini’s first-half goal when Jordan Ayew curled home a fine finish in the second half.

Both sides had their chances in an at-times chaotic spectacle, with the ball unpredictable and the surface treacherous, and McClaren admitted that he was baffled by the negative reaction to his side at full-time as they spurned an opportunity to make it three wins in a row following victories against Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur.

“They know when their team don’t try and don’t put the effort in and don’t show attitude and don’t want to win the game,” said McClaren, who introduced Aleksandar Mitrovic, Ayoze Perez and Florian Thauvin as his substitutes. “We were going forward at the end, we opened the game up, put a wide player on for a defensive player and wanted to win the game and went for the game so I was a little surprised.

“But you know you are always going to get that in football and you can’t satisfy everybody.

“We have to overcome the emotional fragility of the crowd and I thought we did that to a large extent as we did against Tottenham and in the previous two games.

“We are trying to convince them to fight and come through it and see what you can do and conditions were really poor to play good football which is what we like to do and the players did well in it I thought.”

Bournemouth and Norwich City’s wins at the weekend has dragged Newcastle closer to the drop zone, and McClaren believes that the unpredictability of the Premier League this season means that no team can take a game for granted.

“Everybody is beating everybody else and you should show no disrespect to anyone else, no matter how many points they’ve got because it is so tight and it’s not a given to win any game, as we have seen with some of the results today and a lot of away wins,” said McClaren, whose side play Everton on Boxing Day.

“But I think you will find that, although it may even itself out towards the end of the season.

“But we are growing, we are getting better, we continue the run, we would have taken seven from nine and we move on to Everton.

“We’ve got the points, the performances and the way the team is fighting, ten-12 games ago after conceding, you could tell there was nervousness, we came back from that which pleased me and we had chances to win the game at the end and it’s frustrating we never.”

Newcastle settled quickly as they subjected Villa to a succession of attacks as the rain continued to fall on Tyneside.

Any question of an abandonment would have infuriated Newcastle, who took the lead on 38 minutes when Chancel Mbemba flicked on Siem De Jong’s corner into Coloccini’s path, who steered home via a deflection.

Referee Martin Atkinson was happy to let the game go on at half-time with the rain easing off, and Villa were almost back on level terms within a minute of the restart.

Jordan Veretout, playing behind Villa’s front two of Scott Sinclair and Ayew, rifled goalwards from 25 yards out and Rob Elliot had to parry clear.

Villa continued their pressure on Newcastle’s goal, with Coloccini and Mbemba clearing well, but the Magpies should have been two ahead just before the hour.

Gini Wijnaldum was allowed to cross in from the left, finding De Jong completely unmarked in the six yard box, but the Dutchman could only nod wide when it looked easier to score.

De Jong was replaced by Perez, as Villa made their first change of the game, introducing Rudy Gestede into the fray, and the former Blackburn man almost made an impact with his first touch, Elliot tipping his goalbound header over the crossbar from Alan Hutton’s cross.

But Villa were level moments later, when Ayew collected Veretout’s deep cross, cut inside and fired an unstoppable curling effort past Elliot. It was no more than Villa deserved, and led to a sustained spell of pressure from the visitors that Newcastle, had they taken their chances, could have avoided.

Thauvin was brought on with Newcastle going all-out for the win, and the Frenchman showed his quality with a succession of superb crosses from the left, none of which were capitalised upon by the Magpies’ strikers.

And Gestede almost had the last laugh for Villa, the striker denied by Elliot who tipped over magnificently with a minute left on the clock.

Perez sent a late chance high into the Leazes End from Sissoko’s pass but Villa held on for a well-deserved point.

Although they dominated in terms of chances, they never seemed in full control of the fixture, and McClaren admitted that Newcastle are very much a work in progress.

“We are not at that level yet but that is the level you want to get to. We have a certain strategy and game plan in each game and that does not necessarily mean controlling a game through possession,” said the former Middlesbrough manager.

“Sometimes we are a better team when we are breaking, as we saw again on Saturday.

“We are trying to get that balance between the two so we are growing, developing, we are not there yet but as long as we keep battling and picking up the points and always being competitive.

“Every manager says they could be doing this and that in their interviews, in the last two weeks with Liverpool and Spurs and previous to that we were talking about eight games, 13 points, we had two bad performances.

“Of course it is going to be nervy and that ebbs through from the whole stadium. You can feel the tension in certain spells of the game but the one thing I did like was the way they did overcome that.

“We had a bad 10-15 minutes and overcame it and finished the game strong and that pleased me because I thought ten games ago we would have lost that game.”