Barcelona 7-2 Newcastle

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Newcastle bowed out of the Champions League with an alarming 7-2 defeat at Camp Nou.

Despite going into the final quarter of the two legged tie with everything to play for, with the score on the night 3-2 to the hosts, Newcastle came out in the second half on Wednesday night and collectively forgot how to defend.

Even in a manic and entertaining first half during which Elanga scored two well worked goals, we gifted Barcelona three goals.

When you're playing a team with the ability to pass and dribble through any team in world football, to give up so many simple goals is just totally unacceptable, and it made our job impossible.

From Barcelona's opener which saw both Thiaw and Hall simply slip over to their seventh where Jacob Ramsey inexplicably floated the ball across his own box into the path of the disbelieving Raphinha, almost every goal had an element of comedic defending about it.

But just like the sliding-doors final seconds of the first leg, which saw us concede a penalty to go to Spain level rather than leading, we were seconds away from going in level at half time here when Trippier conceded a penalty following a VAR intervention.

And we could have no complaints as a ball was fizzed across the box and Trippier grabbed Raphinha's arm and pulled him back.

He certainly made the most of the contact but it was a foul and in fact by the letter of the law Tripps was lucky not to see red, instead being cautioned.

After Ramsdale got a hand to Yamal's penalty but couldn't keep it out, the half time team talk looked a lot different for Eddie Howe.

With Trippier replaced by Livramento for the second half, we conceded a quickfire trio of sloppy goals in the first 15 minutes - including a horror show moment from Malick Thiaw who stumbled around watching a slow ball trickle into Lewandowski, who had moments earlier nodded home from a corner completely unmolested by his alleged marker Livramento.

We looked absolutely shell-shocked for the rest of the game and I genuinely worried they could hit double figures.

As it was, they finally eased up, only scoring again when Ramsey decided to play in Raphinha for the final goal.

Mercifully, the referee blew for time bang on 90 minutes to bring an end to a memorable and exhausting Champions League campaign.

Had we gone out tonight by a more slender margin, this would have been an unqualified success of a European campaign.

As it is, this performance raises serious questions about the calibre of a defence that's seemingly allergic to clean sheets.

While Thiaw has done well this season - very well in a lot of games - he has a calamitous rick in him.

Burn - an absolute warrior, a black and white legend who tonight flew in with the best tackle/block I have ever seen to deny a certain goal - is getting on and we need a succession plan.

Tino apparently has eyes on a big move and may well move on this summer, which based on his availability (and in the heat of the moment, his performance tonight) may be no bad thing, while we can't rely on Botman staying fit.

That leaves Lewis Hall.

What an absolute monster this lad is.

He deserves to be playing at the very top of the game and the only hope is that he gives us one more season to try and get back into the top echelons.

So yet another draining game down, but this one with a sense of finality that, if nothing else, gives us free midweeks until the end of the longest season ever (we've played the most games of any team in the top five European leagues).

But before that - just the small matter of the derby.

We need to use that as an opportunity to show that the Barcelona performance isn't who we are.