Newcastle ease Premier League pressure ahead of Champions League return

NEWCASTLE: This was about more than a win, more than three points, more than just getting back on track in the Premier League.

The victory over Brentford was about everything that last season represented — the glory, the joy, the success. This was about hard yards, consolidation, proving a point — and doubters wrong. This was about releasing the pressure valve and enjoying something so long in the making, something two starved decades had eaten up.

Newcastle United return to the Champions League for the first time since the summer of 2004 on Tuesday night. Italian giants AC Milan the opponents, the iconic San Siro the stage.

However, on Saturday morning, the mood on Tyneside was not triumphal. Instead, 24 hours before, Eddie Howe had been fielding questions on the club’s mini “crisis” and discussing how he had no time for critics of himself, or his side, at the club’s training base.

This really was not how it was supposed to be. A club so starved of even relative success should be on cloud nine at even the prospect of a return to the continent, never mind a shot at glory in the world’s premier club competition. Yet having lost three games in a row, and finding themselves in the lower reaches of the Premier League, the air cut a somber environment ahead of the visit of the then-unbeaten Bees.

A win was all that mattered on Saturday evening, and luckily for Howe, Newcastle and all associated with it, Callum Wilson, top scorer in the last three seasons, delivered.

“Pressure?” Wilson quipped, after the match. “Pressure is for tires.”

His solitary strike, a well-struck penalty at the famous Gallowgate End, was enough to lift the gloom which had gone before and turn eyes very firmly to Tuesday’s date with destiny.

“It