REUTERS – Newcastle United’s new 12 million pound ($17.11 million) signing Jonjo Shelvey enjoyed a fine debut, contributing to both his side’s goals, as the Premier League strugglers halted West Ham United’s momentum with a nail-biting 2-1 win on Saturday.

Newcastle were relieved to clamber out of the relegation places after two early goals from Ayoze Perez and Georginio Wijnaldum — his ninth of the season — saw them make an electrifying start to proceedings at St James’ Park.

They had to hold on grimly in the dying minutes as Newcastle keeper Rob Elliot made a vital save from Cheikhou Kouyate.

Nikica Jelavic had put West Ham back in the game four minutes after halftime, when he latched on to a poor back pass from defender Chancel Mbemba.

Shelvey, the new capture from Swansea City, was instrumental with his passes in setting up the victory as Newcastle boss Steve McClaren found some measure of revenge over West Ham’s Slaven Bilic, eight years since Bilic’s Croatia denied his England team a place at Euro 2008.

($1 = 0.7015 pounds)

(Reporting by Ian Chadband, editing by Alan Baldwin)