Newcastle rout PSG to secure stunning Champions League win

Champions League

Newcastle 4 Paris Saint Germain 1 

Had the way this memorably breathless night panned out been submitted as a potential film plot, it would have been dismissed as too far-fetched, too fantastic. Too, er, Geordie.

Eddie Howe's side are very much alive and kicking in the group of death after St James' Park played host to a distinctly Tyneside-tinged near-perfect return to the Champions League.

Two of Newcastle's four scorers - Dan Burn and Sean Longstaff - are North-East born and bred, as a deliciously local flavour helped the current generation of black and white heroes post a 21st Century equivalent of the celebrated victory over Barcelona those fans who are a little longer in the tooth have been dining out on for more than a quarter of a century.

Luis Enrique had been part of that Barca side battered by a Tino Asprilla hat-trick in 1997, and the head coach must have had some uncomfortable flashbacks as a Parisian side built on style rather than any discernible substance threatened to be swept away by a deluge of goals.

They were three down just five minutes into the second-half, and although they belatedly gained a minimal foothold by pulling a goal back, the damage had already been done by the latest vibrant incarnation of the Geordie nation.

It's three seasons since Paris kept an away clean sheet in the Champions League, and it took less than 20 minutes to stretch that unwanted run as St James' Park erupted with a scarcely-believable out-pouring of emotion to meet Miguel Almiron's opener.

The goal came gift-wrapped, an ill-placed Marquinhos pass from the back intercepted by Bruno Guimaraes, who freed Alexander Isak to fire in a shot from 15 yards which was saved brilliantly by Gianluigi