There’s just something not quite right about Newcastle United. Eddie Howe has been granted a long list of mitigating factors by his apologists, from FFP restrictions to last season’s addition of Champions League football to the schedule, to injury problems. But you look at how the likes of Aston Villa, Brighton and Chelsea have quite decisively overtaken them so far this season, and wonder how far those excuses really go.
Last season, it was the defence that was the issue. Newcastle outscored everybody except Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool, but gave up too many goals when it mattered. This season, they have overall been more defensively capable, but have one of the worst goalscoring records in the division. The balance just isn’t there at all.
There’s one particular issue that leaps out of the TV screens and the spreadsheets alike. Coming into this game, when Newcastle had spent most of the time on the back foot, or the game is fairly end to end, they had thrived…
- v Southampton: 23% possession, 3 shots: Won 1-0
- v Spurs: 35% possession, 9 shots: Won 2-1
- v Man City: 38% possession, 10 shots: Drew 1-1
- v Wolves: 51% possession, 14 shots: Won 2-1
…but the moment Newcastle need to find a way through in a game they have dominated, the goals dry up and the results suffer.
- v Brighton: 60% possession, 21 shots: Lost 0-1
- v Bournemouth: 61% possession, 14 shots: Drew 1-1
- v Fulham: 61% possession, 16 shots: Lost 1-3
- v Everton: 67% possession, 13 shots: Drew 0-0
Those results against a pretty reasonably representative cross-section of the Premier League table confirms what the eye test has told us about Newcastle this season. They are, at this point, a pure counter-attacking side who can incisively create tap-ins for themselves when they catch the opposition on the hop – as they did for Alexander Isak’s first-half equaliser here. But whenever they need to find a bit of quality to break down a more stubborn side, they come up woefully lacking.
This Newcastle side are not only dispiritingly one-dimensional, but not even good at preventing those kinds of goals from going the other way.
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For all Chelsea had the majority of the possession, their opener and the goal that restored the lead immediately after the break both came on the counter-attack. Newcastle seemingly deciding that the best way to deal with Cole Palmer was to give him all the space he needed to do whatever he fancied.
Palmer’s long pass up the left for Pedro Neto on the way to skinning Fabian Schar and squaring for young buck Nicolas Jackson to tap-in was, in fairness, absolutely sensational. But there was no excusing Schar backing off and back off from Palmer after he picked up a loose ball just inside the Newcastle half, allowing him to enter the box and fire home a shot that Nick Pope really should have kept out.
Howe (rightly) took enormous credit for taking Newcastle to fourth in his first full season, but it is impossible to escape the conclusion that he has only taken them backwards from there, turning them into a side that knows only one way to win and has no idea what to do when they aren’t permitted to do so. They heaped plenty of territorial pressure on Chelsea in final 20 minutes or so, but still left Robert Sanchez’s goal largely untested.
It’s not that Newcastle are dreadful, by any means; we’re not talking about them having gotten battered here by a Chelsea side on the up. But ‘Chelsea side on the up’ is kind of the point: others in their class and with similar aspirations are getting better.
Newcastle, meanwhile, look like a mid-table side, play like a mid-table side, and have the results of a mid-table side. What’s that saying about ducks again? The league table has the answer.
Perhaps this really is the best this group of players can do, but after their rip-roaring 2022/23 and free-scoring 2023/24, it’s hard not to feel like they are only becoming less and less the sum of their parts.
Every side has its so-so spells, and it’s possible that’s what Newcastle have had in this first quarter or so of the season. Howe already knows he has something to work with here to get Newcastle rising again; he now needs to show that he can.
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