NEWCASTLE UNITED 1 WEST BROM 1

FOR nine nerve-jangling minutes on Saturday afternoon, Newcastle United’s nightmare week was threatening to get a whole lot worse.

Trailing to Victor Anichebe’s headed opener, and with Hull City still on level terms with Burnley, the Magpies dropped into the relegation zone for the first time since they claimed their opening win of the season against Leicester in October.

With the memory of last weekend’s capitulation at the King Power Stadium still fresh in the mind, the mood inside St James’ Park was one of sombre resignation. Just how bad would things become before the end of the afternoon?

The answer was no worse than they were at kick-off, and while that should hardly be a cause for celebration given that the Magpies have now not claimed a victory in nine consecutive games, we have reached a point where small mercies are markedly better than no mercies at all.

Newcastle remain two points clear of the drop zone, but with one more game marked off and with Hull, now the side in gravest danger in 18th, having wasted the most inviting fixture of their run-in. Suddenly, it is the Tigers who appear to be the team hurtling headlong towards the abyss.

Newcastle were far from perfect at the weekend, indeed there were times when their lack of pace and incision was so chronic that they seemed incapable of fashioning a decent attacking move, let alone a goalscoring opportunity.

But having been rightly criticised for their abhorrent attitude at Leicester seven days earlier, it is only fair to acknowledge the extent to which the Magpies’ players dug in and worked diligently to secure a point that could prove crucial in the final reckoning.

Qualities such as effort and desire should be a given in any professional sport, but they have been absent on Tyneside on far too many occasions this season, so after a hugely trying week, it at least says something that they were evident when the situation demanded it most.

“A point might be huge,” said head coach John Carver, whose own personal week has matched that of his team in terms of self-inflicted chaos. “But the more important thing for me was the performance. I thought the performance showed that there are people, and I include myself in that, up for this fight.

“A lot was said after the Leicester game, and rightly so, but there was a response – from the players and the fans. It was like being back in a football stadium where the only thing that mattered was football.

“That was nice, that was pleasing. You saw the reaction from the fans, it actually affected the reaction from the players.

“To go 1-0 down to another set play against a team of giants, you can be disillusioned like we were last week at Leicester. But we showed character and determination to come back, and that was so encouraging.

“From the first whistle to the last, there was one team trying to win the game, and one team trying to stay in the game and wait for a set play.”

There was certainly much more solidity to Newcastle’s play than had been apparent at the King Power Stadium – hardly a difficult task to achieve – with Paul Dummett’s availability to start at centre-half an important factor.

Dummett’s performance was far from flawless, and the Magpies continued to look vulnerable whenever West Brom delivered a corner or free-kick into the area, but at least he provided an element of composure alongside Fabricio Coloccini, who was also far more proactive and unflustered than he had been a week earlier.

With Vurnon Anita and Jonas Gutierrez just about coping in the full-back areas, Newcastle restricted West Brom to a handful of attacks. Had the visitors made the most of them, however, the outcome could have been very different.

As well as scoring through Victor Anichebe’s now-traditional goal against the Magpies – the striker, who exploited some typically slipshod marking to head home Craig Gardner’s first-half free-kick, has scored more goals against Newcastle than any other top-flight club – the Baggies also hit the woodwork on two separate occasions.

The first came as early as the eighth minute, with Craig Dawson glancing Gardner’s corner against the post, and the second came with 17 minutes remaining as Chris Brunt fired against the crossbar from close range after his initial header had been blocked.

The opportunities underlined the ongoing defensive frailty within the Newcastle ranks, although with Ryan Taylor producing a much-improved display alongside the more reliable Jack Colback at the base of midfield, at least the hosts were able to cut off most West Brom attacks at source and dominate possession.

They were unable to do an awful lot with the ball for the most part, and both Emmanuel Riviere and Remy Cabella remain sources of huge frustration, such is their inability to threaten inside the 18-yard box.

Riviere, who is still without a Premier League goal following his £6m summer move from Monaco, continues to look completely out of his depth, while Cabella, with his flicks, tricks and wasteful passes, increasingly resembles a lightweight, if slightly less volatile, version of Hatem Ben Arfa.

The exceptions to the general ineffectualness were Moussa Sissoko, who finally displayed signs of returning to life and would have scored had Joleon Lescott not cleared his goalbound shot off the line, and Ayoze Perez, who has arguably been the one true success story of the season.

It was Perez’s deftness in the box that hauled Newcastle level before the break, with the fleet-footed Spaniard controlling what would otherwise have been a poor free-kick from Taylor before swivelling to drill a crisp low strike through a crowd of bodies and into the bottom right-hand corner of the net.

“This was the biggest game since we lost at Aston Villa and were relegated, but the destiny is in our hands and we have to deal with that,” said Carver.

“We can’t afford to rely on other people. We’ve got to take care of our own business, and I saw enough to do that. Hopefully, it’s not much too late, and I don’t think it is. There was a lot of determination out there, and it’s good to see.”