It helped that Chelsea’s radically revamped team suggested that Enzo Maresca was not exactly prioritising this competition. It seemed somehow significant that he left Cole Palmer on the bench throughout while Nicolas Jackson did not even travel to the north east. Perhaps equally tellingly at the final whistle, Palmer, who had repeatedly warmed up, appeared to be asking Maresca’s coaching staff why he had not been sent on to attempt to eclipse Alexander Isak and co.

While Howe opted for gentle rotation, making five alterations to the XI that started last Sunday’s 2-1 Premier League defeat at Stamford Bridge, Maresca changed Chelsea’s entire lineup. Perhaps such wholesale, eleven man churn was responsible for the early moment of kamikaze style visiting defensive chaos that prefaced Isak swinging in an inviting cross and Joelinton spurning a close-range sitter after miscuing an attempted right-foot shot.

Yet if Chelsea were repeatedly self-destructive at one end, their counterattacking pace ensured they remained capable of endangering the home defence and it took a timely block on Sandro Tonali’s part to divert Renato Veiga’s goal-bound shot.

As Maresca’s team began looking increasingly, if deceptively, comfortable in possession, Howe urged his players to press their guests ever harder and higher, and this policy soon paid dividends. An amalgam of overconfidence and casualness as Chelsea’s Benoît Badiashile and Veiga attempted to pass out from the back was met by ruthless pressing from Joelinton and Tonali.

Once Joelinton’s challenge had stopped Veiga in his tracks, Tonali pushed the ball into Isak’s path and the latterly out of sorts Sweden striker delighted in passing it into the back of the net. After five Premier League games without a win, Howe was in need of a cup boost and his smile duly widened as Axel Disasi could only help Joe Willock’s header home following the midfielder’s connection with a menacing Isak delivery.

Although Nick Pope was required to save smartly to deny João Félix, Maresca’s insistence that his players continued to attempt playing the ball around at the back was engendering the sort of optimism recently all too conspicuous by its absence in the Gallowgate End.

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Chelsea were walking repeatedly into a classic Howe trap and the only mystery was why Chelsea’s manager did instruct his charges to change tactics. After all, in the last round here, AFC Wimbledon kept Newcastle extremely quiet in open play courtesy of a no nonsense low block and the sort of long ball attacking game that, on another night, might just have prompted a shock.

Instead the second half had barely begun before Maresca’s goalkeeper, Filip Jörgensen found himself forced to dribble around the on-rushing Anthony Gordon deep in his six-yard box after attempting a rather reckless one-two with a defender.

While Chelsea might have reduced the deficit had Lloyd Kelly, enjoying a decent game after making a rare start in the heart of Newcastle’s defence, not somehow blocked Christopher Nkunku’s shot, they were struggling to cope with Willock.

Like Kelly, he was making the most of the chance to start a game and Chelsea certainly struggled to cope with Willock’s ability to persistently glide 30 or 40 yards across the pitch.

By the time, midway through the second period, Willock, who missed most of last season through injury, was replaced by Bruno Guimãraes he had arguably done enough to persuade Howe to name him in his first XI for Saturday’s league game against his old club Arsenal here. More immediately Chelsea had little option but to live dangerously and Maresca duly ordered Marc Cucurella to increasingly vacate his nominal left-back berth and operate as an extra midfielder. If this ploy sometimes offered Newcastle opportunity it also proved capable of stretching them to the limit at times.

Yet if Howe’s defence were spared as, much to Maresca’s disgust, Félix shot wide with the goal at his mercy, Sean Longstaff thought he had headed his team’s third only to see that effort disallowed for offside while substitute William Osula hit a post. By then though Newcastle had done enough.