Newcastle mark their progress under Howe with disappointment at a draw against Man City

Newcastle were taught a familiar lesson, as Manchester City recovered from 3-1 down to claim a draw on a dramatic afternoon on Tyneside.

It was all a long way from the days of Gordon McKeag and Peter Swales, as The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia met on this sunny summer afternoon on Tyneside. The days of these two clubs as the serial under-achievers are long-gone. One is nearing the complete dominance of the European game demanded by its owners. The other is just starting out on the same journey.

The Abu Dhabi project is well into its second decade, and things are going pretty smoothly. The ultimate prize, the Champions League, hasn’t yet arrived, but the Premier League has been colonised, the competition successfully reduced to one, at a push. The Premier League has been won for four of the last five years. They began this season as clear favourites to win it again and arrived in Newcastle having secured victories in their opening two games of the season without conceding a goal.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, are in their early days at Newcastle. The spending has been big but not as lavish as some might have been expected, but they hired the right coach and he pulled the team to comfortable safety last season. The new season has started brightly enough with four points taken – and no goals conceded – from their first two games, against Nottingham Forest and Brighton.

This match is a prototype version of a vision of football’s future, but it took less than six minutes for Newcastle to receive something of a reminder of the distance that they have to make up if they’re to fully realise the aspirations of their new owners.

Manchester City’s team oozes class from every pore, and it took just five minutes for Ilkay Gundogan to slip between two half-sleeping defenders to score a goal which undermined the many good things that had been said about the Newcastle defence over the course of the previous couple of matches.

But Newcastle grew into it. An open game and the vast swell of noise coming from the crowd invited them to throw players forward and when they attacked, particularly on the break, Manchester City’s defence creaked a little. Ederson had to make saves and clear opportunities were spurned.

After 29 minutes, a VAR call over a borderline offside gave Miguel Almiron one of the oddest goals of the Premier League season so far, deflected in off his hip after he threw himself at the ball like a man trying to smother a bomb. Less than…