Derby County 1, Newcastle United 0.

PRIOR to last night's Premier League encounter at Pride Park, Derby fans Angela and Trevor Ashley renewed their marriage vows at the stadium. They will leave for a holiday this morning, but for Newcastle manager Sam Allardyce, the honeymoon is over.

Kenny Miller's first-half winner condemned Allardyce to his first defeat since replacing Glenn Roeder, and provided a timely reality check following an impressive start to the season.

Two weeks ago, Derby goalkeeper Stephen Bywater was embarrassed as his side conceded six goals to a rampant Liverpool. Last night, he did not have to make a single save of note. On the tenth anniversary of Faustino Asprilla's heroic hat-trick against Barcelona, this was as impotent an attacking display as it was possible to imagine.

Just as previous Newcastle managers had watched their side under-perform miserably at the home of the Premier League's so-called lesser lights, so Allardyce was forced to learn his first harsh lesson as a United boss. When it comes to the Magpies, there is no such thing as an away banker.

Possession was wasted, ground was conceded and Derby were allowed to dictate the pace of the play. Had Steve Howard not wasted two glorious headed opportunities in the second half, a defeat that was chastening might have been far more humiliating indeed.

As it was, Newcastle merely limped to their fate, with even the presence of the in-form Michael Owen insufficient to spark them into life.

Allardyce's decision to withdraw Owen after less than an hour will have done little to quash suggestions that the pair are not necessarily the easiest of bed-fellows, and the Magpies manager must now decide whether the England international's presence is enough to justify the continued abandonment of his preferred 4-3-3 formation.

Owen has publicly spoken out against the system in the past and, in the absence of the injured Mark Viduka, Allardyce's decision to partner the striker with Shola Ameobi underlined the cachet Owen currently enjoys on Tyneside.

How long that will last, however, is a moot point. Newcastle's four-man midfield failed to carve out a single chance despite Derby's position at the foot of the Premier League table, and Allardyce was quick to introduce Obafemi Martins into a three-pronged attack in an attempt to get his side back into the game.

Martins will have felt aggrieved not to have started the match, although he was not the only Magpie nursing his pride at Pride Park as Steve Harper was once again preferred to the fit-again Shay Given.

Not that Harper's place can necessarily be taken for granted now, though, after he was beaten from almost 30 yards.

Miller's 38th-minute opener came at the end of a fiercely-contested first half that had been high on industry but low on invention.

With David Rozehnal and Claudio Cacapa throwing themselves into a succession of whole-hearted tackles, Derby had already resorted to a succession of hopeful long balls into the box by the time Miller broke the deadlock.

Most were calmly cleared to safety, with Cacapa proving particularly capable despite the attentions of Steve Howard, a striker who fits the term 'old-fashioned' so well it seems fitting that he plays in black and white.

Howard, who started his career with Northern League side Tow Law Town, came close with an early glanced header that thudded into Harper's midriff, but the Magpies' back four had barely been troubled before Miller marked his Derby debut with a goal of the highest order.

Geremi failed to clear Bywater's long clearance and, after Howard touched the ball into his path, the Scotland international unleashed a ferocious long-range strike that curled past a motionless Harper and found the top right-hand corner of the net.

The goal was probably more than both Derby and Miller deserved for their first-half showing, although the hosts could at least point to a surfeit of possession as proof of their marginal superiority.

Newcastle, on the other hand, could draw nothing from their display before the break apart from an early Rozehnal effort that flashed past the post. With both Nicky Butt and Geremi having their hands full in a defensive capacity, neither James Milner nor Alan Smith were able to offer the kind of midfield threat that might have forced Derby onto the back foot.

The majority of Newcastle's attacking foundered before the ball had even reached their strike pairing, and the few balls that found the front two merely underlined Ameobi's limitations as a target-man for Owen to feed off.

Ameobi is hardly a natural finisher either, and when he finally found himself in a shooting position following Owen's 42nd-minute lay-off, he scuffed a 20-yard shot wastefully wide of the upright.

That was just about as good as things got for the visitors, despite Allardyce's introduction of Martins in an attempt to inject some much-needed pace into his side's play. That it was Owen that made way for the Nigerian meant that eyebrows were inevitably raised.

Martins' appearance on the left of a three-man attack at least allowed Milner to push forward on the opposite flank, and Newcastle went close to grabbing a barely-deserved equaliser when Steven Taylor flashed a rising drive narrowly over the crossbar shortly after the hour mark.

But the final scoreline could have been much worse had Howard taken the late opportunities that came his way. The striker directed two headers wide of the target from the edge of the six-yard box, with the second, eight minutes from time, coming at the end of a break that had left the Magpies horribly exposed.