AT the end of his first 90-minute appearance in almost ten months, Andy Carroll was asked how his fitness was holding up. “I feel fine,” said the Newcastle striker. “There wasn’t much running about really, it was just jumping in the air.” Match report over.

Carroll’s assessment was a perfect summation of a wretched game, on a wretched day, featuring a wretched refereeing performance. Oh, and Newcastle performed wretchedly.

Watching the sleet fall on a bleak Lancastrian landscape as yet another aimless long ball was pumped forward, it felt like you were watching football from the 1980s. Just with a little less purpose.

It was certainly a world away from the free-flowing, possession-based style that is supposed to be the hallmark of the modern-day Premier League. Expected goal stats? The only thing that was to be expected in Saturday’s game was that two players would tussle in an aerial challenge and the referee would blow for a foul. Against Carroll.

Burnley won’t mind too much given that Chris Wood’s second-half header enabled them to end a three-game losing run and re-establish their credentials for being obdurate opponents at Turf Moor. In truth, a 1-0 defeat was hardly a disaster for Newcastle either given that they went into the game on the back of successive victories over Sheffield United and Southampton and remain in 11th position in the table, seven points clear of the bottom three.

It was still a thoroughly dispiriting afternoon though, when the cold bit to the bone and Newcastle failed to record a single shot on target.

“It was disgusting, it was a disgusting game,” was Carroll’s additional assessment. “The weather was terrible, the referee gave decisions against us. We gave everything we could give on the basis it was a poor game.”

Phil Bardsley concurred, although the former Sunderland full-back seemed to take an almost masochistic sense of enjoyment from his running battles with Carroll in particular.

“It’s still a contact sport,” said Bardsley. “People love a good old-school challenge, and there were certainly a few of them. You didn’t see many people rolling around, not with these two teams, we all got up and dusted ourselves down, and got on with it.

“Big Andy did me in the first few minutes – I’ve still got whiplash from that one. But it’s what we do. We get bumps and bruises, but get back up and win football matches.”

Did Newcastle suffer from trying to take on Burnley at their own game? Probably. The decision to start with Carroll and move Joelinton to the left was a sensible one given the absence of both Allan Saint-Maximin and Miguel Almiron, but it inevitably meant the visitors were much more one-dimensional than they have been at any other time this season.

From the very first minute, their defenders were aiming 50-yard balls towards Carroll’s head, and while the stand-in skipper won his fair share of headers despite the attentions of both Ben Mee and James Tarkowski, it quickly became apparent that rookie referee Tim Robinson, making his first Premier League appearance, was not going to allow the game to flow.

Every time Carroll went up, Robinson was reaching for his whistle, which was an understandable frustration to a player whose physical attributes form such a key part of his game, and who Sean Dyche felt should have been dismissed after one of his stray elbows caught Mee in the face.

“He (Mee) was jumping up giving elbows, I was jumping up giving elbows,” countered Carroll. “It was exactly the same at both ends, but every game it is always me, always me. Fabian Schar has come in there with bumps all over his head, bruises everywhere, and somehow nothing. It’s a disgrace really.”

Carroll does seem to get singled out for special treatment, but once it became apparent that Robinson was going to adopt a low-tolerance approach at the weekend, it was imperative Newcastle came up with alternative plan of attack. Instead, they stuck rigidly to an approach that was not working.

Clearly, without Saint-Maximin and Almiron, their counter-attacking threat was badly compromised, but until Dwight Gayle came onto the field for the final 19 minutes, the Magpies proved utterly inflexible in terms of their attacking approach.

Admittedly, Gayle failed to convert Newcastle’s best chance of the game when he stabbed Joelinton’s cross wide of the target with nine minutes left, but at least the striker’s presence asked slightly different questions of a Burnley defence that are hardly fazed by physical confrontation.

Carroll’s qualities add a significant string to Newcastle’s attacking bow – his arrival as a second-half substitute transformed the game against Southampton – but when he starts, there is an understandable temptation to spend the next 90 minutes launching hopeful punts in his general direction. As Saturday proved, if he is going to have an extended run in the team, the Magpies will have to be a bit more intelligent and creative than that.

“When you play Andy, it’s important you find the right balance in terms of your attacking play, and I didn’t think we got the balance quite right,” admitted Bruce. “I thought there were times where we got a bit too direct, and that’s something we’re going to have to look at and work on.

“But look, we were chasing the game in the closing stages because we were very, very comfortable before they scored. We were comfortable until the goal, and I’ve said repeatedly, you don’t want a wrong decision from the referee to be the deciding one. We huffed and puffed and never gave in, and we’ve had two big chances with Andy’s and that little bit of quality for Dwight’s chance. In a game where there hadn’t been much, we thought that was the time.”

Instead, Wood’s 58th-minute header was decisive, leaving Bruce hugely frustrated at the decision-making process that led to the award of the corner that resulted in the goal. Federico Fernandez was shepherding the ball out when he appeared to be fouled by Wood, with his tumble to the ground forcing him to touch the ball as it headed over the goalline.

Robinson, the referee who had already angered Bruce once this season when he failed to dismiss Leicester’s Hamza Choudhury in August for a foul on Matt Ritchie, initially awarded a goal-kick. Then, presumably under instruction, he changed his mind, pointing to the corner flag instead.