Newcastle United's Season Statistics Make For Interesting Reading

According to statistics by whoscored.com, Newcastle United are excelling in many areas of their game this season as the league table suggests. However, two statistics give a great insight into Newcastle’s success this season.

While Newcastle’s average ball possession this season is 53%, something that they may have to work on if they are promoted, their pass success is 78%, meaning that when they have the ball, they are using it well.

Newcastle have obviously scored a lot of goals this season, even boasting the division’s top goal scorer in Dwight Gayle. Meaning that they are using the ball to create opportunities, which is furthered by the fact that 64% of their goals have come from open play this season.

Newcastle’s season statistics go on to show the importance of Matt Ritchie who has been lauded as their best player on multiple occasions this season.

When Newcastle are attacking, 45% of the ball goes down the right-hand side meaning that they are clearly using Ritchie as an outlet more often than anyone else.

Newcastle also seem far more willing to shoot from distance this season. With 43% of their attempts coming from outside of the box, with some great goals being scored this season.

However, not every Newcastle statistic this season is a positive one. With 32 cards being shown to the Magpies’ players this season. Only 66% of these were for fouls.

Perhaps the Newcastle players must look at why they are picking up such a large percentage of their cards from things other than fouls, this again may be something they need to eradicate if they do gain promotion to the Premier League.

If hypothetically the club does find itself back in the top division next season, they may find that their average of 15.1 shots per game may mean that they score enough goals to see themselves safe.

While the sides’ average 1.8 offsides per game is likely to increase due to the increased intelligence of Premier League defenders. For example, David Luiz is far more likely to react quicker to seeing a forwards run than Sol Bamba is.

The stats do make interesting reading though and it will certainly be interesting to see how they do develop over the next two seasons and see what, if any, impact that has on the teams’ style of play.