8 mins A left wing cross from Rolando Aarons was cleared to the edge of the box and when Paul Dummett's curling effort was palmed out by Chris Maxwell, Aleksandar Mitrovic easily tucked it home in front of the sparsely-populated Town end 1-0

33 mins Florian Lejeune failed to head clear Gregg Cunningham's cross from PNE's left flank and the ball dropped nicely for Tom Barkhuizen to volley in from six yards. 1-1

Half time: Lilywhites 1 Magpies 1

Full time: Lilywhites 1 Magpies 1

Rafa Benitez said:

"The fitness is quite important. You can see that they (Preston, who start their league season a week earlier than us) were a little bit more sharp. 

"Still, the understanding between players and the tactical work, we have to improve....physically, we were not at the level we were expecting, and also we were not playing at the tempo we were expecting.

"We are trying to change some players. We have to wait to see the right offers, and then after we will see if we can add some players.

"I think we need some more players. I wouldn’t say how many, but it also depends on the market. Mike convinced me he would give us the last penny of the money available.

"We are not asking for more, we are asking for the money we can use. We can generate some more money. Hopefully, we can do that.

"We have too many players now, so not all of these players can have a future at the club.

"We have too many now, and we need 25 players. I don’t know about those leaving because it depends on other clubs, but we continue to monitor every situation.

“With Jacob Murphy, we were looking for some wingers with some pace, and he can give us that. 

"Javier Manquillo - he’s a player that can play in both positions. We needed some cover for the full-backs, so I think he has to improve from last season, but he has the potential.

"We have three keepers and we had to give them some time. We couldn’t leave one person on the bench, because after one week I think they all needed to play.”

Alex Neil said: 

"I thought it was a great performance.

"The only thing that disappointed me was that in the first 15 minutes we looked like we lacked a bit of belief in what we were doing. Maybe that was because of the calibre of the opposition.

"Once we settled down and made a few passes, we were fine - it was good to see them react to conceding a goal.

"I thought all in all, it was a great test for us and we really held our own.

"I think at the start of the match in the first 15 minutes we looked a bit tentative and a bit scared because we were playing Newcastle, but then I thought we grew in confidence as the first half wore on, and I thought our best spell was leading up to half-time really.

"It was a big step-up in opposition for us but it finished one each and to be honest, I don’t think anyone would have grumbled had we gone on and won the game.

"The game was quite evenly matched and we were really pleased with how our lads played. The good thing is that they seem to be getting hold of how we want to play, some of our football was excellent.

"It’s about being brave enough to play against good players. No disrespect to the teams we’ve played but we are playing against international players that have got real quality but I thought we more than held our own.

"We opened a really good team up and created chances. I’ve no complaints whatsoever, the boys tried really hard and some of them played really well.”