2 things I liked (and 3 things I didn't) from Newcastle 0-1 Team K-League

Newcastle United lost 1-0 against Team K-League at the Suwon World Cup Stadium on Wednesday.

In what was the opposite of an advert for the strength of Premier League sides, United toiled away against a side cobbled together from a league ranked in the bottom ten in the Opta Power Rankings.

A solitary goal from Jin-gyu Kim was enough to condemn United to a third straight preseason defeat.

Here are 2 things I liked (and 3 I didn’t) from the match:

Liked: Seung-soo Park’s cameo

The new signing Seung-soo Park, who hasn’t even played a minute of football in K-League 1, came on and showed some excellent flashes of quality in his brief cameo. He was quick and sharp to beat two defenders, winning a corner not long after entering the pitch, and he got a raucous reception in his home country.

Labelled the 'Korean Messi' by some in his homeland for his prodigious dribbling skills, it was easy to see why, as the left winger was the most effective Newcastle player in the side despite his limited minutes.

The home crowd roars as Park Seung-soo who's never played a minute in the K-league 1 holds his own against the K-League all-stars. Nice to see the lad rising to the ocassion! 🫡🇰🇷#박승수 #NUFC pic.twitter.com/aFMejkM6xe

— Joel Kim (@KNTFootball) July 30, 2025

A promising cameo from the new signing, and it will be interesting to see if he can do enough throughout the rest of preseason to secure a spot in and around the first team this season.

Liked: Minutes in the legs

Results-wise, it has been a poor preseason so far for United with three defeats on the spin. The performances have improved from Celtic, but on paper, this could look like the most damning due to the supposed lack of quality in the opposition side.

It’s all about fitness at this stage, and you can’t point a finger at any of the starting elevens Howe has picked so far and say they are our strongest lineups – far from it, with each side having bits and pieces of first eleven, reserves, and kids thrown into the melting pot.

K-League players are also midway through their season, while the heat and humidity in that part of the world is not to be sniffed at, making it a genuinely tough physical test for the lads.

Luckily, results are meaningless during pre-season and they do say every team has a bad run during the season, so hopefully this is Newcastle getting it out of the way early. But mentality is a very real thing and any long-running sequence of defeats is bound to have an impact. Let’s hope the lads can put it right against Spurs.

Didn’t like: The disjointed display

Setting all the usual caveats aside (preseason, humidity, temperature, etc.), United were dreadful. The side was lacking any sort of cohesion and some of the shooting was abject, and Gordon couldn’t score in a brothel based on his performance. Somebody get that headband off him; it seems to have sapped all his ability Samson-style.

Elanga was just as poor, but it would be churlish to single anyone out as it was poor across the board. Usual caveats aside (again), you would hope to see patterns of play emerging or new ideas being worked on during these sorts of matches, but there was nothing really positive to take collectively from a game like that.

The malaise at the top of the club and the transfer window appears to be filtering down onto the pitch, and that is something Eddie Howe will have to work very hard to overcome with the first league game just two weeks away.

Didn’t like: Joe Willock carried off with what looked like a nasty injury

Unfortunately, Willock was stretchered off the pitch with what looked like a nasty injury in what has become a familiar refrain for the former Arsenal man. Thankfully, Eddie Howe mentioned post-match that it doesn’t seem as bad as first feared, but we just won’t know until the player has a scan.

Willock is a player of huge quality on his day, but he has desperately struggled for form since returning from another long injury layoff last season and has never quite recaptured his best form in Black and White.

His spell under the previous manager when he almost single-handedly saved us from relegation, by scoring eight goals in 14 appearances, perhaps set him up to fail as he was never likely to find the kind of form again. But for all the improvement Howe and the coaching staff have coaxed out of Joelinton and Hall et al., Willock just appears to be stuck and another long injury layoff could spell the end of his time as a first-team squad member at United.

Didn’t like: Set-pieces

Hopefully, this is not a sign of Martin Mark’s ability as a coach as they were perhaps the poorest part of a poor performance. Crosses and corners seemed to always hit the first man or were easily defended, free kicks were failures and even restarts from goal kicks were woeful.

The Dane has been brought in as a specialist and he obviously needs time to get his ideas across but there was certainly no inventiveness or ingenuity on display from set-pieces.

Again, I’m getting those pre-season caveats out and I still (providing we sign some players, other than Aaron Ramsdale – taking our ‘keeper count to six…) think we can have a good season but things really do need to change off-the-pitch ASAP.

Keep the faith. HWTL