Sheer luck is an underestimated commodity in football. On a day when Brighton enjoyed loads of the stuff and Newcastle almost none, a PhD student could surely have used these 102 minutes on Tyneside as the basis for a thesis on the vagaries of the game’s fluctuating fortunes.

To say that Danny Welbeck’s 35th-minute goal for Brighton arrived against the run of play would be a considerable understatement. Until then, Fabian Hürzeler’s side had been largely kettled in their own half as Newcastle suffocated their attempts to play out from the back.