Newcastle 1 Villa 1 - Report and pictures

The Magpies were leading courtesy of Fabricio Coloccini's first-half strike when the unmarked De Jong was picked out beyond the far post.

He was in a perfect position to meet Georginio Wijnaldum's 57th-minute cross, but contrived to miss the target with the goal at his mercy.

Four minutes later, Jordan Ayew blasted home the equaliser, which secured a 1-1 draw.

It just Villa's fourth Barclays Premier League point since the opening day of the season, in the process denying their hosts a third successive win.

It proved to be a game of two halves on a sodden St James' Park pitch, with Newcastle dominating the opening 45 minutes.

He took the lead seven minutes before the break through Coloccini's first goal in more than 13 months.

However, the introduction of substitute Rudy Gestede allowed the visitors to take a more direct approach.

They got their reward when Ayew struck from distance, with both sides passing up good opportunities to win the game in an eventful conclusion.

Villa remain 10 points adrift of the Magpies, who currently occupy the final safe place in the league table.

He said: "I must say from where we were to where we are finishing at Christmas, it's a lot healthier and the key thing is the attitude of the players.

"They are staying in the game, they are fighting for 95 minutes, they are finishing games strong - they did last week and won the game there, and nearly did it this week.

"But we'll take seven from nine and move on."

Opposite number Remi Garde too was able to take positives both from the result and the way his players reacted in adversity.

Garde said: "You know, maybe this is the point that we will need at the end of the season, and then I want to be optimistic regarding the way we reacted in the second-half.

"Of course if you look at the first half, obviously for me it's a lack of confidence of my players coming into the game and saying, 'We don't know exactly what is going on.'

"When you are bottom of the league, the confidence is not straight away within the game.

"We have to battle for that and when we are in a situation where we have nothing to lose, we start to play and that was the case.

"The difficulty is to do it for 90 minutes, this is our problem currently, to play a whole football game with intensity, to win the duels at the start of the game.

"We have to work on that and the next game will be very important, it's very, very important for us."