‘Not our best game’ – Newcastle United defender makes telling admission after big Brentford win

Such are the standards at Newcastle now where players and staff are able to critique such a comprehensive victory.

Goals from Bruno Guimaraes and Jacob Murphy saw The Magpies lead 2-0 at the break before Ivan Toney pulled a goal back for Brentford from the penalty spot.

But a second from Guimaraes followed by further goals from Miguel Almiron and an Ethan Pinnock own goal saw United cruise to their biggest home win in the top flight since beating Tottenham Hotspur 5-1 on the final day of the 2015-16 season.

The result followed Newcastle's impressive 4-1 display at Fulham the weekend prior.

“It’s another great result to score five goals, last week four,” Schar said. “We’re pretty pleased.

"We know [the fans] are behind us and when we play the way we play now it means they are there with us from the first minute. Obviously, the first 15 minutes were not easy.

“I thought we played quite well but difficult then obviously we scored two goals which helps us pick up our pace.”

Brentford’s Bryan Mbeumo had a goal ruled out for offside inside the opening 10 minutes before Newcastle took the lead shortly afterwards.

"We scored at very good times, the first goal came in a difficult period for us,” Schar told The Gazette. They scored an offside goal and they fought like something was in the game but then we scored twice.

“We know the quality of every team and how difficult it can be if you are not at it. It’s difficult, second half they scored to make it 2-1 and the momentum changes but it takes us five minutes to score another goal which was really important.

"To be honest, it was not our best game in terms of how we played with the ball.

"Sometimes in the first half we lost quite a few balls in our own half which obviously we don’t want to have so there is a lot more to improve but still to score five goals, the way we played, you can be proud of it and keep doing what we’re doing.”

Newcastle were gifted a few goals during the match with Murphy and Almiron’s strikes coming as a result of Brentford giving the ball away on the edge of their penalty area.

“People want to see the goals and a lot of them come from our pressing and what we’re doing in training so we’re pleased with that and we’re very pleased with the last two results,” Schar added.

The win takes Newcastle up to sixth in the table with a quarter of the season played. Barring the opening week of the season, it’s the highest league position Newcastle have been in since Schar arrived – but the Swiss international isn’t getting carried away.

“I don’t look too much at the table this early in the season and not all of the teams have played the same games,” he continued. “But you can be quite satisfied with the recent games and where we are at the minute, but we’ll just take it game by game.”