After three straight Champions League wins without conceding a goal heading into our trip to Marseille, Tuesday night served as a brutal wake-up call for Newcastle United.
Newcastle would’ve been joint 2nd in the league rankings had we hung onto our 1-0 lead, but a second half collapse and results elsewhere have seen us drop from 8th down to 11th over the last 48 hours.
We remained 8th on Tuesday night, with the likes of Galatasaray (14th) and Barcelona (18th) moving the chance to move above Newcastle, but we did see three clubs overtake us in the table last night.
Real Madrid (5th) leapfrogged us with a 4-3 win in Olympiakos, as did Sporting Lisbon (8th) after a 3-0 win over Club Brugge and Atalanta (10th) following their 3-0 win in Frankfurt.
Elsewhere, Atletico Madrid’s 2-1 win over Inter Milan moved them one spot behind us, although Liverpool missed their chance to move into the top 8 thanks to a shocking 4-1 defeat at home to PSV; our final home opponent in the UCL league phase.
See the updated standings below after the completion of gameweek five:
As the table shows, below, the top 8 move automatically into the knockout stages, while clubs placed 9th to 24th will then have a two-legged play-off match to get into the last 16. Anyone placed 25th to 36th are eliminated.
Next up for Newcastle is a trip to German giants Bayer Leverkusen on 10th December, which promises to be a tough game based on our awful away form and their shock 2-0 win at Man City on Tuesday.
After that, we play PSV at St James’ Park on 21st January in what looks to be a must-win game if we wish to make the top 8, followed by a trip to face holders PSG on 28th January.