It was not to be for Saints at St James Park, conceding a goal in the first 5 minutes was always going to make things hard, but overall we knuckled down and made sure that the Toon Army sweated to the final whistle.
The first topic of debate for Saints supporters in the pubs of Newcastle an hour before the game was the absence of Romeo Lavia from the starting line up, everyone felt that if Lavia was going to be rested from one of the three games this week, he should have sat out the Blackpool game and been in the starting line up for this one.
Perhaps Nathan Jones thinking was centred around his ability to play two tough games in a matter of days and wanted to prioritise Brentford for the young midfielder, but the fans were not in agreement.
The second topic was the selection in the back five and the inclusion of both James Bree & Jan Bednarek, Bree was a surprise as he is primarily a right back or to a lesser extent a centre back, he is not a natural wing back, and also his lack of experience at this level, Bednarek was never going to be a popular choice for obvious reasons and most thought that either Caleta-Car or Bella-Kothcap should have been preferred.
In the end both had reasonable games despite some early adjusting needed.
Ultimately though despite our gutsy display and the threat that we might just get a second and make it an uneasy final third for the home side, the fact was we lost because of the same old things that we have lost games this season, ie a lack of concentration and inability to stop leaking early goals and not putting vital chances away.
But hopefully thiese things will get better going forward and the news from the transfer window of two new arrivals, one a genuine centre forward who has a track record for scoring goals will hopefully rectify a few problems.
At time I have taken some sections of our support to task, but rarely the away support and up at St James Park our support was magnificent, around 3,000 travelled to support their team with a view that could best be described as watching it from the top of Redbridge Towers and they never gave up.
They deserved to see their team win, but at least we were not let down by the players on the night and the Newcastle fans afterwards were magnanimous in victory and admitted they had never felt confident of the win right up to the final minutes of injury time.
As I have always said it is better to lose in a semi final than in the 1st round, defeat if hard to take, but at least we turned up and gave them a game, I would rather have been in St James Park last night than anywhere else, Ok I might have preferred to be at Cambridge as we would have probably won and been at Wembley, but you know what I mean.
So we march on, time to concentrate on our Premier League survival, time to stop the moaning about whether Nathan Jones is or isn't the man for the job, he is here now to stay, lets get behind him there will be plenty of time for criticism in the summer if we go down, but in the meantime give him the benefit of the doubt.
Time to perhaps cut the owners some slack, they have showed they are willing to spend money, apparently only Chelsea spent more in the window, the squad has been bolstered with players in key areas we were lacking, there is no reason why we should now not pull clear.
Brentford is a big game on Saturday, but of the travelling Saints fans back their team as they did up on Tyneside and indeed Goodison Park, then we can ,make relegation worries a distant memory.