Newcastle 5-0 Crystal Palace

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After scoring 0, 1, 2, 3 and 4 in their last five league games, Newcastle completed the set on a glorious Wednesday night at St James', putting away-day specialists Palace to the sword with a 5-0 demolition on a night where everything went right.

The statement win put us up into third, four points off Arsenal in second and five points ahead of Chelsea in sixth, with a superior goal difference to the chasing pack.

Backed by a crowd who were clearly up for it and once again led by Tindall and Jones in place of the stricken Howe, we were at it from the off, chasing and harrowing, and Joelinton should have buried a Jacob Murphy cross with our first attack.

By the 14th minute, Murphy decided he was fed up of his team mates wasting his pinpoint crosses and went full Tonali, hammering into the near top corner from a crossing position.

Unlike our Italian maestro's effort against Brentford however, this was 100% shot without any debate.

Just as in the dismantling of Man United in the previous game, we offered our opponents a lifeline in the 37th minute, Nick Pope clumsily crashing into Richards after getting a glancing touch on the ball.

Following a 4,000 minute VAR check, the ref was summoned to the monitor to inevitably overturn his initial decision of no penalty.

Redemption for Nick Pope, though, came after a 4,000 minute run up by Eze, stopping completely for a little lie down on his final step before poking the ball into Pope's hands.

And 90 seconds later it was 2-0, Barnes attacking down the left and squaring for Guehi to handle into his own net for the second time against us this season, making him our eighth top scorer.

From that point on we put on an absolute exhibition of old-school attacking football, Barnes and in particularly Murphy terrorising the Palace defence by simply getting their heads down and running at them.

And the beating heart of the team, Sandro Tonali, completely dictated the terms all over the pitch.

Barnes had his deserved goal in the second of seven added minutes of first half stoppage time, and it's a measure of his newfound importance to the team that when he was in your never doubted that he was going to finish.

And we weren't done there, a beautiful Jacob Murphy cross from deep on the right following a short free kick nodded home by Fabian Schar.

We completed the scoring just before the hour, Isak - having spurned several much easier chances - sweeping home first time from outside the box following Joelinton winning the ball back with a relentless press.

At this point Tindall began to ring the changes, resting and protecting key players, and getting some more minutes back into Gordon's legs (though he looks to have some job dislodging Barnes on current form).

We lost our rhythm a bit and Palace had a few chances to get a goal back that they couldn't take, but we hadn't half earned the right to take our foot off the gas.

So with six games remaining, including tricky trips to Villa and Arsenal on the horizon, we've done absolutely everything asked of us at this stage of the season and put ourselves firmly in the driving seat for the Champions League.

This has been an incredible season regardless of what happens now, but this wonderful team are showing that they're not done yet.