8 mins Jesus and Silva combined for the latter to work the ball across the face of the United area, only for Jamaal Lascelles to intervene, aiming a first time pass at Kenedy near the right touchline.

However he succeeded only in reaching Mendy, who took a touch before finding Raheem Sterling lurking out on the left. He checked infield to open up space ahead of DeAndre Yedlin before marking his 100th PL game for City with a smooth right-footed effort angled beyond Martin Dubravka. 0-1

30 mins Ki and Ayoze Perez broke up a City attack just over halfway and United counter attacked, Perez angling a forward pass towards Kenedy in the middle of the park. He brought the ball down in one movement then laid it off to the advancing Salomon Rondon, who moved into the left hand channel before threading an excellent pass between John Stones and Aymeric Laporte.

That was hammered right-footed into the net from six yards by DeAndre Yedlin, shadowed by Jesus all the way from the halfway line to the point of impact for no useful reason 1-1

parity is restored

Half time: City 1 Magpies 1

52 mins Sterling had possession just outside the Newcastle area but was unable to find sight of goal and moved the ball infield to Aguero, who was similarly unsighted. The Argentinean's remedy was to flick it sideways into the path of Kyle Walker. 

With Perez bearing down on him, the full back had time to take a touch to get the ball out from under his feet before unleashing a venomous strike that found the gap between Ciaran Clark and Federico Fernandez before nestling in the far corner of the net for a memorable first City goal 1-2

Full time: City 2 Magpies 1

Rafa Benitez:
 

"I am really pleased with the effort, mentality and team spirit. We were in the game for a while. We gave the ball away or the first and the second was a great goal. It is the same situation for us, we have to improve on the ball and we would have more chances against these teams.

"I am pleased to see the support of the fans and the way players were working. That is the main thing to have everyone together.

"We cannot be watching the table, it is too early. The main thing is the performance. We are not too far away, as soon as you start with a couple of victories you can go up.

"This team in the last two and a half years has worked for each other. They feel the passion of the shirt and the fans, nobody can question that.

"I am disappointed because we lost - it doesn't matter against which team. They won because they are a good team, but we were in the game. 

"We were close to maybe getting something and that is the positive thing for the future - to see a team that is trying to do what they have to do to maximise what we have.

"We have to do what we did, and we did well but still we need something more if we want to get points against this team, especially away. The team effort was there, the mentality was there - you could see the players fighting for each other.

"I'm really pleased with that but really disappointed because we have to manage better to get results here."
 

Pep Guardiola said: 

"We thought the game would be like this, difficult to attack. We defended really badly when we conceded the goal we were unstable and the most important thing is to be stable.

"We have 10 points from 12. We played Arsenal away, so it’s a good result and we are delighted for the guys. Raheem (Sterling) made a fantastic goal and fought a lot. Especially in second half, he was clever, he moves the way we need to be stable. The wingers make stability in the team and he did it well.

"The game, the goal we conceded we defended very bad but in general we didn’t concede many chances. We conceded few set-pieces, free kicks. Our performance was good, especially in second half, where we didn’t let them run and created chances.

"I'm not really disappointed in the way we played. We created chances. I was pleased with the patience of the players especially in the second half. I am satisfied

"We will improve. I don’t have doubts about that. The players know this is part of the process, it’s what we have to do, be better every game than the opponent. We don’t target lots of goals, we target to be better than the opposition.

The Magpies failed to avoid their tenth successive Premier League defeat at this venue but if nothing else, left with some pride intact and their best league result for eight years.

This reverse was a setback rather than a catastrophe, but there was never really much doubt about the destination of the points - even though Newcastle enjoyed parity at 1-1 for 22 minutes.

The Citizens led on seven minutes when Raheem Sterling bent his shot beyond Martin Dubravka after the returning Jamaal Lascelles had fatally gifted possession just outside his own penalty area.

But United levelled from a rare attack on the half hour - DeAndre Yedlin finishing from close range after a lung-busting run saw him reach a Salomon Rondon cross from the left flank. 

That followed good work from Ayoze Perez and Kenedy and the remainder of the first half passed without incident, our usual nemesis Sergio Aguero cracking a shot just wide and sending a free kick straight into the wall after compliant referee Kevin Friend penalised a fair challenge by Mo Diame. 

However the reigning champions regained their lead seven minutes after the restart thanks to an unstoppable low effort from distance by Kyle Walker that flew into the bottom corner of the net - a reminder of the benefits of not being afraid to shoot - and being capable of hitting the target.

(It's also apparently a by-product of cutting holes in the back of our socks to relieve pressure on the calves - although from our lofty perch it looked like Walker was wearing polkadot hosiery....)

Having reached half time at 1-1 here in 2015 only to then leak another five goals in rapid succession, the worry was that City would move through the gears and knock us into the middle of next week. 

And that really was that; the remainder of the game seeing the visitors fail to remotely threaten an equaliser and Dubravka deny City further goals. The 'keeper made some outstanding stops with one noteworthy triple save and a perfectly-timed dash off his line to legally dispossess Aguero.

Christian Atsu came on for an unwell Kenedy and Joselu and Jacob Murphy replaced Rondon and Ciaran Clark respectively, but those replacements proved to be futile in terms of adding to our forward threat and the opportunity of a second equaliser simply never arrived. 

Again it has to be recorded that we sloppily wasted set pieces - something which has absolutely nothing to do with the calibre of opponent. The bloody ballboys showed better range at times.

More positively though, Fernandez quickly looked at home as a replacement for the sorely-missed Florian Lejeune while Lascelles recovered from a slow start on his return to the side.

So that's three of last season's top six now played with the same 1-2 result in each game and an identical pattern of scoring (0-1,1-1,1-2). None of those games were embarrassing defeats and if interspersed through the season, hardly surprising. 

Facing them so early in the season was down to the fixture programmers and sitting in the bottom three as a consequence comes as no great shock. Our rivals may also end up pointless from these games and with a worse goal difference than ours, but this run needs to stop soon.

Four points from our next two games (Arsenal at home Saturday week and Palace away eight days later) must be the target: no wins from six games would begin to see us get cut worryingly adrift.

Off the field, the home side celebrated 10 years of ownership by Sheikh Mansour's Abu Dhabi United group, who were once mentioned as potential suitors for Hall and Shepherd's shares. 

To say the two clubs have gone in opposite directions is beyond question; City increasingly dominant in domestic competitions while we've endured a decade of decay and disharmony, punctuated by unnecessary Championship successes caused by two needless and avoidable relegations. 

Apart from sharing a pitch, the only commonality seems to be use of the word 'torture' by critics of both clubs, theirs allegedly centred in the Gulf, ours served up in regular 90 minute sessions.

While City are looking to become major players in the Champions League though, the Sheikh of Shirebrook seemingly has his eyes on a hat-trick of demotions, leaving us merely relieved not to have been walloped here. If that's not living in reduced circumstances then I don't know what is.

Television news is now polluted by faceless representatives of think tanks, whose motivation and backers remain opaque as they peddle their version of reality. And sadly that now also applies to football punditry, where a grim cavalcade of blokes with a grudge against us gain ample airtime.    

Today's latest episode of this was played out on BT Sport, Rio Ferdinand squeezing into the elfin footwear of Sky favourite Dennis Wise to urge our gratitude for the Ashley regime - fresh from signing a deal to flog his own range of clobber via Sports Direct. What a remarkable coincidence.  

That's not to say that Rafa is blameless in all of this; his patchy track record of signings not totally explainable by fiscal issues and a lack of club control giving him free rein with the press and more ammunition for the Ashley acolytes. In the propaganda war, the club is the real casualty.  

With all possible transfer windows now closed and a fortnight before our next game, this would seem like a perfect time for the manager and the owner to actually meet face to face, to discuss budgets, contracts, investment or whatever, just to actually talk - no matter who sends the invite. 

That seems a fairly forlorn hope at this point though.

Biffa