Watson Happy With Derby Draw

By Tom Easterby

Newcastle United Under-18 coach Dave Watson declared himself happy with his team's performance in their 1-1 Tyne-Wear derby draw with Sunderland on Saturday.

Substitute Louis Johnson's last-minute header rescued a point for the young Magpies after Josh Robson's deflected 78th-minute opener looked to have earned the visitors a win at Little Benton.

Former England international Watson told nufc.co.uk United were worthy of all three points against the stubborn Black Cats and lauded the team spirit within the camp that helped Newcastle dig deep and come up with a late, late equaliser.

"It was deflection and the keeper's gone the wrong way, it was a scrappy goal they got," recalled Watson.

"I thought we were excellent for the first 35 minutes of the game, we really played some top class football and created chances.

"There's a great team spirit we've created here and the players always keep going until the end, they always give their all and because of that, you make your own luck and that's what happened at the end. We've scored from a set-piece, but we work on set-pieces, and we've come away with a point."

Tyne-Wear derbies at any level are hard-fought contests but, after watching United turn in a disciplined performance against their local rivals, Watson praised his youngsters' application as they dealt with the occasion well.

"It's something we talked about before the game - controlled aggression," he said.

"We want the lads to be disciplined in what they do and we talked about all that. I thought, considering a couple of bad decisions that went against us, that we conducted ourselves really well.

"We feel we should have won, but we're performance-based and the performance, for me, deserved to win, without any question of a doubt."

Making reference to the referee's decision not to send off the visitors' Ross Colquhoun and goalkeeper Greg Purvis for two separate last-man challenges on Luke Charman in the first half, Watson was somewhat less impressed, however.

"We don't like to see kids getting sent-off by any stretch of the imagination but if your strikers are working to get in behind defenders and they bring them down, they've got to abide by the rules," said the former Everton skipper.

"After that, Sunderland came back into it a little bit, but I thought we showed really good character. A lot of the group we've got are first years, and we're seeing really good things from them so I'm delighted with the performance - we should have won the game."