Half time: Villa 0 Newcastle 0

64 mins: Stuart Pearce made contact with Julian Joachim in the box and Lee Hendrie converted the penalty that followed 0-1

Full time:  Villa 1 Newcastle 0

Ruud Gullit said:
 
To follow

John Gregory:

To follow

Having just signed Paul Merson (who watched this game from the stand), legend has it that Villa were keen to acquire Alan Shearer as a replacement for the newly-departed Dwight Yorke.

John Gregory claims to have telephoned Ruud Gullit the day after this game and despite not receiving a decisive answer either way, chose not to pursue the matter. Instead, he contacted Coventry City to begin a successful pursuit of Dion Dublin. 

Guardian match report:

The Gullit legend and the belief that he is the answer to Geordie Prayers met stout resistance at Villa Park where John Gregory's team produced the type of fluent, winning football that has become a distant memory for the Newcastle supporters.

It took a 63rd-minute penalty from Lee Hendrie to give Aston Villa the victory that keeps them abreast of Liverpool at the head of the Premiership and sees the Gullit era at St James's Park start with a defeat. Let no one be in any doubt however that these three points were particularly well earned.

It would have been a sensation if Gullit, never slow to change a winning team, had not shuffled the pack after the 4-1 drubbing by Liverpool. In the event the three changes were, for him, mildly conservative. The new faces were the Peruvian Nolberto Solano, Aberdeen's Stephen Glass and Andreas Andersson, fresh from his goal-scoring exploits that put England on the road to defeat in Stockholm.

Villa paraded their new £6.75m signing Paul Merson whose move was finalised too late for this game. He was still rated, at 5-1, by the bookmakers as a likely scorer; an unhappy reminder of the extra curricular activities that he says made his time at Middlesbrough increasingly uncomfortable.

With Merson unavailable it was an inconvenient time for Stan Collymore to cry off with a recurrence of the ankle problem that kept him out of the first two games of the season. 

It meant that Riccardo Scimeca took on the role of emergency striker but such is the confidence underpinning Villa's impressive start that the young England international slotted into the unfamiliar position with the minimum of fuss.

The aggression with which Villa sought to stop Newcastle establishing any momentum was another manifestation of the belief that has transformed the Midlanders since Gregory's arrival. With Gullit's team given little opportunity to find their rhythm Villa held sway convincingly in the early stages and were disappointed not to have an interval lead to show for their superiority.

It looked only a matter of time before Newcastle would be punished for their shortcomings in the air. At the end of the first half Gareth Southgate was first to Thompson's deep corner and instead of making the catch Given chose to fist the ball away, succeeding only in presenting Ugo Ehiogu with a chance that he headed narrowly too high.

The pattern remained the same with Ehiogu given time to meet Thompson's free kick and challenge. The ball dropped into Mark Draper's path with the Holte End preparing to acclaim the first goal. However, the ball was deflected wide of the upright.

Both Alan Shearer and his Swedish partner were forced to live on scraps, such was the poverty of the service from the Newcastle midfield. The pressure was relieved was when Gary Speed and the nimble Glass reached hopeful crosses but neither effort carried the power to trouble Mark Bosnich.

It was a clever lofted pass from Draper that won the game, Joachim gathering it and then, as he weighed up his options, taking a challenge from Stuart Pearce in the back. After the penalty Newcastle, with Temuri Ketsbaia on from the bench and eager to show the new manager what he can do, made a huge effort to get back into the game but it was not enough.

Biffa