It was a decision that threatens to keep Nuno Espírito Santo awake for many nights to come. Why, oh why, West Ham’s manager will doubtless wonder, did he opt to start with a back three on Tyneside?

Instead of subduing Eddie Howe’s players it simply served to remind Nick Woltemade precisely why he is Newcastle’s record signing. By the 26th minute, when Nuno scrapped that configuration for a much more effective back four, West Ham were 2-0 down and had one foot in the Championship.

Régis Le Bris’s tricky midfielder on the joy he finds in playmaking and the Black Cats’ push for European football

Enzo Le Fée has been chatting for 25 minutes when it becomes clear that his ability to extract rabbits from hats is not confined to the pitch.

“I’m a magician,” says Sunderland’s French playmaker as the conversation drifts to life off the field. “Yes, really! I can do some magic, tricks with the cards, that sort of thing. I used to practise a lot when I was young so I got really good. I still sometimes like to do my tricks but I’m a bit shy about performing them now.”

• ‘It’s unfair, they saw everything’, says Boro manager

• Southampton’s Eckert walks out after questioning

Southampton’s manager, Tonda Eckert, walked out of the post-match press conference at Middlesbrough on Saturday after repeatedly refusing to answer questions about allegations that one of his analysts had spied on Kim Hellberg’s training session last Thursday.

Shortly afterwards Hellberg said his Middlesbrough team were victims of “cheating” in the lead-up to this vital Championship playoff semi-final first leg.

The German has twice come close to the sack but has led team towards safety and first FA Cup semi since 1987

The crate was crammed with bottles but Daniel Farke made light work of hoisting it on to a table and inviting everyone to help themselves. It was a little after 10.30 one night in April last year, an already-promoted Leeds had just beaten Bristol City, and the manager was offering journalists an end-of-season beer.

Such gestures are increasingly unusual in an ever-more corporate and sanitised sport, but Farke brings a human touch to proceedings. Indeed, his refreshingly down-to-earth approach is reminiscent of an illustrious title-winning predecessor. Behind a blunt exterior Howard Wilkinson was a caring manager who, spotting a journalist stranded outside Elland Road late one night, drove him home to Sheffield. It seems the sort of thing Farke might also do.

Vítor Pereira had promised ­Nottingham Forest would approach this assignment with a “Champions League mentality” and his players did not disappoint him.

A fabulous attacking performance featuring four different scorers (plus an own goal) and a clean sheet not merely succeeded in denting a shell-shocked Sunderland’s European ambitions but also lifted 16th-placed Forest to 39 points.

Is this the moment a rough patch turns into a full blown crisis for Eddie Howe? As Alex Scott shone in Bournemouth’s midfield and Adrien Truffert’s late winner prompted wild visiting celebrations, it certainly looked that way.

Newcastle’s manager has now presided over four straight defeats and, with his team stuck in 14th, any vision of European qualification seems a fast receding speck in the distance.

• 1-0 defeat at Sunderland leaves Tottenham in bottom three

• ‘Win a game, everything will be different,’ De Zerbi says

Roberto De Zerbi diagnosed a lack of confidence as the root cause of Tottenham’s ills after his first match as manager ended in a 1-0 defeat at Sunderland. The result leaves Spurs in the relegation zone, two points adrift of 17th with six games remaining.

“We didn’t deserve to lose,” said De Zerbi after a match decided by Nordi Mukiele’s deflected second-half winner. “We played a good game, but maybe not good enough to win.

Thirty minutes before kick-off Roberto De Zerbi wandered on to the pitch with his gilet zipped high to the neck in the face of a chill Wearside wind. By the final whistle that stiff breeze had dropped a little but so, too, had the morale of Tottenham and their new manager.

In cementing the visitors’ position in the bottom three Nordi Mukiele’s second-half deflected winner ensured Régis Le Bris’s Sunderland rose to 10th and De Zerbi’s uncharacteristically subdued body language suggested he was shivering inside.

• Carabao Cup-winning defender signed in 2022 for £12m

• Howe’s underperforming squad set for summer overhaul

Kieran Trippier is to leave Newcastle when his contract ends this summer, heightening the sense of an era ending at the Saudi-owned club.

Trippier’s arrival, for £12m, from Atletico Madrid in January 2022 proved a landmark moment in the team’s transformation after the Saudi Arabian-led takeover in October 2021. He has made more than 150 appearances for Newcastle, scoring four goals, and was part of the Carabao Cup-winning team that beat Liverpool at Wembley in March last year.

• Chief executive says he has no ‘stance on Howe’s future’

• Owners sold St James’ Park to themselves for £172.1m

Eddie Howe has seven games to reassure Newcastle’s hierarchy that he remains the right manager to lead the club into next season.

Newcastle sit 12th in the Premier League and David Hopkinson, the chief executive, has made plain his displeasure at the recent 2-1 home defeat by Sunderland.

• Sunderland’s Lutsharel Geertruida allegedly abused

• Referee stops game per anti-discrimination protocol

Sunderland’s Tyne-Wear derby victory at Newcastle was overshadowed by reports that Lutsharel Geertruida had been the subject of racist abuse from home fans.

The Premier League will now investigate after the referee, Anthony Taylor, stopped the match in line with the league’s on-field anti-discrimination protocol early in the second half.

As recently as Friday morning Eddie Howe talked about some results ­having “bigger consequences than others”. This one most definitely belongs in that bracket.

In completing a Premier League double against Newcastle, Régis Le Bris’s Sunderland consigned Howe and his players to one of their most chastening afternoons at St James’ Park.

Wearside will always be a special place for James Milner. On Boxing Day 2002 he scored his first Premier League goal for Leeds here at the age of 16 years and 356 days. Who, back then, could possibly have imagined that the 40-year-old Milner would have been at the Stadium of Light on Saturday as an extremely impressive, deep-sitting part of Brighton’s midfield?

He played the entire game too, helping guide his team to their first win at Sunderland since 1981 as the injury-hit home side found no riposte to Yankuba Minteh’s fortuitous second-half winner. It briefly lifted Brighton to 10th, level on 40 points with their hosts, before Newcastle’s 1-0 win at Chelsea dropped them down a place.

Visitors were underwhelming in the face of Newcastle’s power and pace and Eddie Howe’s men can still hope to reach the last eight

Banners are not always that easy to unfurl. Particularly on the sort of capriciously breezy March nights when sheeting emblazoned with the message “Budapest awaits me” refuses to be pulled taut and simply sags in the middle.

For a while before kick‑off it was easy to interpret the ongoing struggles of that banner’s owners to successfully hoist it in the Gallowgate End as emblematic of the travails awaiting Newcastle.

Pep Guardiola had Omar Marmoush in the tightest of bear hugs and seemed strangely unwilling to release the smiling Egyptian.

It was the 73rd minute and two goals from the newly withdrawn Marmoush, the second a real show stopper, and another from Savinho had enabled Manchester City to come from behind and potentially shatter Newcastle’s entire season.

• Supporter groups’ pleas for price freezes ignored

• Both clubs insist hikes needed to compete on pitch

Manchester United and Newcastle have increased season-ticket prices by 5% for 2026-27. While both clubs insist the rises are necessary to achieve success on the pitch, their respective supporter groups have strongly criticised the above-inflation hikes.

Season tickets at Old Trafford had previously been frozen for 11 consecutive campaigns, but this is now the fourth successive year they have been increased. The club said: “We have a clear objective to return Manchester United to the top of domestic and European football. We want to keep investing in the team and improving our facilities so fans get the best possible experience. We also need to make sure the club stays financially sustainable taking into account inflation and rising costs.

Eddie Howe accepts his Newcastle side are at their best when they create chaos and no one in black and white is better at conjuring it than Will Osula.

The maverick Denmark Under-21 striker is, to say the least, unpredictable. No one, least of all Osula himself, ever seems quite sure what he will do at any given moment. Here though he stepped off the substitutes’ bench to score a fabulous, virtuoso 90th-minute winner for a home team reduced to 10 men by Jacob Ramsey’s controversial 45th-minute sending off for a perceived dive.

Last year Sunderland departed West Yorkshire on a snowy February night with their hopes of automatic promotion from the Championship in tatters. Leeds had come from behind to clinch a 95th‑minute win that would take them top of the second tier and only the most optimistic visiting fans expected a rematch this season.

Fast forward to a balmy March evening, though, and Régis Le Bris’s well‑executed gameplan lifted an injury hit yet streetwise Sunderland and their debutant goalkeeper Melker Ellborg to 11th in the Premier League.

As rain fell, incessantly, Eddie Howe wandered around the pitch alone. The final whistle had just gone and, with Everton celebrating a deserved win, Newcastle’s lingering hopes of a top-six finish were also blown.

Newcastle look shattered, mentally as much as physically, by a Champions League campaign that will soon pit them against Barcelona and their Premier League form is suffering accordingly.

• Newcastle v Barça; Liverpool get Galatasaray rematch

• Spurs take on Atlético Madrid; Arsenal meet Leverkusen

The draw for the Champions League last 16 has produced some intriguing, heavyweight clashes featuring the renewal of old rivalries. If Manchester City’s meeting with Real Madrid arguably ranks foremost among them, Chelsea’s engagement with the holders, Paris Saint-Germain, and Newcastle’s duel with Barcelona are certainly not lacking in glamour.

Or, in the case of Chelsea and PSG in particular, edge. The tie is a repeat of last summer’s Club World Cup final in New Jersey, which Chelsea won 3-0 thanks to two goals from Cole Palmer and with a team under the management of Enzo Maresca.