Newcastle 3-0 Scunthorpe: The Daily Mirror match report

Newcastle made Scunthorpe pay for inflicting a shock defeat on them earlier in the season.

Scunny won 2-1 in October at Glanford Park, but they were simply swept aside on Geordie soil as Chris Hughton’s men powered towards an instant return to the Premier League.

Table-topping Toon surged 12 points clear of third-placed Nottingham Forest, and need only five more wins to secure promotion.

With strikers Andy Carroll and Peter Lovenkrands in this mood, Newcastle will clinch it long before the end of the season.

Carroll scored twice as be tormented sorry Scunthorpe in a way that suggested Scotland can forget all hopes of persuading him to play international football for them. This is a man destined to play for England if he can maintain his progress.

Lovenkrands, meanwhile, is dreaming of an international recall by Denmark for the World Cup and strengthened his prospects by scoring for the fifth successive time.

Hughton’s team utterly destroyed Scunthorpe in the first-half and were 2-0 ahead within 22 minutes. Scunthorpe were fortunate: it could have been 5-0.

The Toon also had a goal disallowed and visiting keeper Joe Murphy pulled off two superb saves as the class gap between the top and bottom of the Championship was cruelly exposed in a one-sided affair. Nigel Adkins’s team were simply clueless as they tried to cope with the movement and slick passing of the Magpies.

Visiting keeper Joe Murphy had already saved from Lovenkrands before  Carroll’s thumped home a 10th-minute header that took him level on 13 goals with Lovenkrands and Kevin Nolan.

Nolan thought he had edged ahead two minutes later when he latched on to Danny Guthrie’s shrewd free-kick to beat Murphy, but the midfielder was marginally offside. Then Lovenkrands  hammered a shot against the underside of the bar after Murphy failed to cling on to Jose Enrique’s cross.

Murphy was far more impressive when he turned over Carroll’s shot in the 20th minute, but the keeper was deserted again by his defenders two minute later.

Wayne Routledge’s pass enabled Lovenkrands to slide in his 12th goal in 11 games. Now it was only a question of how many Newcastle would score.

The crowd of nearly 40,000  only  had to wait until the 10 minutes after the break for the third. Guthrie, relishing his new role in the heart of the midfield, created it with a through ball that sent Carroll galloping clear of the leaden-footed defence before he provided a lovely finish to clip the ball over Murphy.

It was damage limitation  for Scunthorpe who were again rescued by an offside decision when Jonas Gutierrez netted.