How Much Trouble Are Newcastle In?

Newcastle lost 1-0 to Aston Villa on Saturday and were booed off, their second league defeat in a row and their 16th home game without a clean sheet, the longest such run in the club’s history. 

Eddie Howe resigned, Bruno Guimarães, Sandro Tonali and Anthony Gordon were sold for roughly £236m, and Matthias Jaissle was handed a young squad with 18 days to prepare. 

So how much trouble are Newcastle in? Not relegation trouble yet, but structural trouble, and the fix is not obvious.

Newcastle Sold Their Spine and Went Shopping for Potential

Guimarães went to Arsenal for £75m, Tonali to Tottenham for a reported £92.5m to £100m and Gordon to Barcelona for around £68m. Last season, Guimarães produced nine league goals and five assists, and Gordon six goals and two assists, for 22 goal contributions between them, while Tonali ran the midfield. 

Trippier and Targett left on free transfers, and Howe resigned before the season began.

Newcastle reinvested about £266m on eight signings:

Only Touré has scored among the new faces. Fernández-Pardo and González, the two most expensive, have four appearances each and no goals; Bamba hasn't started a game, and both Hornícek and Fernández-Pardo have made costly errors. 

That is the problem with building on potential: it needs proven players to lean on, and Newcastle sold the proven players.

Booed Off at Home: The Numbers Behind the Gloom

Johan Manzambi’s 36th-minute header beat Newcastle, and it came after 4-1 defeats at Leeds and Coventry, the first time since December 2012 they had conceded four or more in consecutive away games. 

Newcastle have conceded 13 goals in their first six league games, joint-worst in the league with Chelsea and Bournemouth, and their expected goals against (xGA) of 10.48 is third-worst. After five games, they ranked 20th for possession won in the final third.

The attack is still not the main issue. Newcastle have scored ten in seven, though their top scorers, Joe Willock and Anthony Elanga, have two each. At Coventry, they had 66.7% possession and 19 shots to nine, yet still lost 4-1, and Jaissle’s own explanation was that games are decided in the box.

Jaissle Isn’t the Whole Problem, but He is Part of it…

Jaissle has moved Newcastle to a vertical, transition-based style, pressing in two banks of four and attacking quickly on turnovers. Malick Thiaw says he demands intensity from everyone, but the press isn’t winning the ball high enough to protect a young defence.

Swapping Howe for Jaissle looks more like a lateral move than a step forward: both are better without the ball than with it, and that is the main concern because Newcastle have struggled under both when trying to maintain possession.

The board is reportedly relaxed. Football Insider says there are no plans to sack Jaissle, who arrived on a four-year deal after Newcastle paid Al Ahli more than £9m, and the hierarchy expects an up-and-down season. 

The manager still needs to get more from expensive, talented players who have been unconvincing so far.

You Can’t Survive on Kids Alone

Alan Hansen said you can’t win anything with kids, and Ferguson’s teenagers made him eat it in 1996. But those kids had Schmeichel behind them, Cantona in front of them and Irwin, Bruce and Pallister telling them what to do when it got ugly. 

Newcastle sold their captain, midfield anchor, and best winger; let Trippier and Targett walk for nothing; and now ask teenagers to work out Saturday afternoons alone.

The clearest picture of the planning came in stoppage time against Villa. Chasing an equaliser, Jaissle took off Joelinton and threw on Dan Burn, as a makeshift striker with orders to hit long balls. 

Newcastle had managed one shot on target all night, and this is a club that loaned a £65m striker, Nick Woltemade, to Juventus in the summer. 

Jaissle’s defence was that Burn was the biggest guy on the pitch, which is true, and that was the point. But a club whose Plan B is a centre-back and a long ball looks like it hasn't planned anything, and it turns to desperation quickly once the points dry up. 

Crystal Palace come next, then Everton twice in five days. They need results quickly because the Premier League, and football in general, have always been about results. 

Newcastle were five points clear of the bottom three before the weekend, and that cushion lasts as long as the goals do. January has to bring league-ready leaders and a proper striker, or the board will learn what the cheap seats already know.

The kids are not the problem, because some of them are good. The problem is the planning, because, as social media shows, Newcastle fans are blaming the “red cartel” and every entity other than their own club and manager.

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