Eddie Howe explains bold Joelinton decision for Newcastle United v Fulham

Eddie Howe has explained his decision to stick with Joelinton in his Newcastle United starting XI against Fulham.

The Brazilian was charged with drink-driving in the early hours of Thursday morning, and Howe admitted prior to the game he was undecided over whether or not to remove him from the team.

But after a conversation with his backroom staff, the Magpies head coach named an unchanged starting XI from the 2-0 Carabao Cup quarter-final versus Leicester City in midweek.

“I had a long meeting with my coaching staff yesterday afternoon after training, where we debated the whole scenario,” Howe explained. “Ultimately I have to make the decision and I did.

“As I said in my press conference, I didn’t underestimate what Joe did, but there’s a whole host of things to consider around it and I felt this was the right call at that moment.”

Speaking to Sky Sports prior to kick-off, Howe added: “We had internal discussions with Joe. We’ve dealt with him internally, had discussions with him and he’s spoken to the group as well.

“He was very remorseful and very sad in the early part of the week. Now we’ve put him into the team based on everything we know.”

The 26-year-old started the match on the left-hand side before moving back into central midfield following Bruno Guimaraes’ enforced withdrawal.

Newcastle climbed back up to third in the Premier League table after Alexander Isak’s 89th-minute winner.

Former Magpies striker Aleksandar Mitrovic comically missed a penalty for the visitors.

“I think we got a lift from that moment – bizarrely sometimes that can happen,” Howe said. “They miss the penalty, the crowd really gets behind us, our players feel a sense of maybe a little bit more freedom because we could have been behind and we weren’t.

“Alex comes on, I thought he did really well and Maxi did really well, our two substitutes really made a difference for us and it was great to see Alex score.”

Howe added: “We kept to good principles today. I don’t think we deviated, we didn’t panic, we didn’t shoot from long distance, we didn’t get edgy in our play.

“The players deserve a lot of credit for continuing to do the right things as chances went begging – we missed some really good opportunities, but at least we created a number of chances again.

“Our statistics from that game will be very good, so all positive signs.”