Baines: It Could Be My Best

Full-back says Newcastle free-kick may be his finest ever strike.

Leighton Baines says his free-kick goal against Newcastle may be up there among his best.

The left-back bamboozled Magpies stopper Tim Krul with a sublime swerving 35-yard effort as David Moyes’ men kicked off 2013 with an impressive 2-1 win at St James’ Park.

“It'll be up there,” Baines told evertontv when asked where his thunderbolt ranked. “It was a good strike. It was quite far out to try to curl it, so I thought it best to put my foot through it. I just thought 'have it' and gave it a good whack, and it went in.

“The important thing is that we keep winning and keep ourselves in the mix with the rest of them. We did that today by coming back from a defeat [against Chelsea]. We haven't lost many games in the last year so we showed good character and it was important to get back to winning ways. We're buzzing really.”

Baines earlier saw another set-piece attempt spurned by Dutchman Krul and admitted on a different night he may have picked up a first ever professional hat-trick.

“I said that when I went in,” he revealed. “The lads are giving me a bit of stick.

“I had a chance when Johnny [Heitinga] played a diagonal ball and the keeper did well, and, at the end, if I had got my head up and had a split-second I could have squared it to Bryan Oviedo.

“I haven't done that in time and I've tried to poke it through the keeper's legs. Aside from that, there were a couple of free-kicks as well as the one that went in and, on another day, they might have done as well.

“I've had a few chances, but we won, so that's the main thing.”

A predatory strike from Victor Anichebe completed the comeback win just before the hour mark, and Baines added: “It just epitomises what we're about really. We knew it was going to be tough here, we knew Newcastle were going to come out fighting and we went a goal down.

“But we came out fighting ourselves after that and I thought we played some really good stuff and created a good few chances. We deserved it.”