1 good, 2 bad from Newcastle 1-3 Man City

Newcastle United exited the FA Cup on Saturday, losing 3-1 to Manchester City at St James’ Park. United were outclassed on the night by the much better side, but they’re also a side that have been allegedly financially doped for the last ten years plus, so it’s little wonder they can make ten changes and still retain a world class eleven.

Most articles today will focus on that gulf in class; however, I want to focus on the mistakes we made that contributed to our exit, and our poor season overall.

Here’s my one good-ish and two bad from the game/this season:

Good (sort of): Opening 25 minutes

Stop me if you’ve heard this before this season: “we were good for (inset relevant period of time here)”. And the refrain was repeated in post-match assessments last night. Yes, United were good for the opening 25 minutes and deservedly went 1-0 up via a lovely Harvey Barnes finish from what was our only incisive move of the game.

But once Man City adjusted in game, by moving Reijnders further forward so that he was almost playing as a second striker, United crumbled and hardly saw the ball for the remaining 65 minutes. The midfield was bypassed almost at will by their crisp passing, and their press often forced us into positions we just didn’t want to be in.

We all know we’ve had a punishing schedule this season with a squad that clearly cannot handle the volume of games, and the “out of gas” excuse was also trotted out post-game, but, mark my words, if these sorts of excuses were being offered up by our previous manager there would be uproar amongst journalists and the fanbase.

It serves no purpose in a 90 minute game to be good for 25 minutes (unless you score five in that time I suppose) and when easier games have been and gone (the two ties against Qarabag for instance) and the squad isn’t rotated and youngsters aren’t used is it any wonder your better players are gassed when they come up against superior opponents.

Bad: Woltemade in midfield

Quite simply, it needs to stop. Nick Woltemade is not an “eight”, he will never be an “eight” and is it any wonder that the best football the lad has played for us has been when he has played up front. He’s played as a nine at Wolfsburg and Stuttgart before us and when he was thrust into that role at United, he did a more than admirable job as we’d be completely screwed without his goals from earlier in the season.

Frankly, in my opinion, it’s bordering on criminal negligence to play him in a role he clearly can’t play. It worked for one game when we were down to the barebones in the central midfield thanks to injuries. But you could see last night that Big Nick’s head was never on the swivel looking behind him to see if anyone was there because he just doesn’t have to do that playing as a nine.

This is a lad who will be hoping to play as Germany’s starting striker in the summer, and with just a couple of months left of the season he’s playing as a midfielder! It’s nonsense, and whilst it shows a good attitude from the lad to do a job for the team, it’s ruining him and is wasting valuable development time.

This one is entirely on the manager, and as much as I have the greatest of respect for Eddie Howe as a coach, he’s gotten this one completely wrong and it’s a blot on his copybook that he sanctioned the £69m move for Woltemade when he either won’t, or can’t, adjust the teams tactics to accommodate a talent with such potential.

Bad: In game management

This is a regular complaint in regards to Eddie Howe’s coaching ability and one that personally feel is very hit and miss, as sometimes he gets it right, and others he drops the ball, and whichever way that ratio swings, it certainly isn’t as consistent as you would expect it to be for a manager at this level.

Taking last night’s game as a microcosm for this issue, there were multiple things I spotted that could’ve been managed better, despite all the usual caveats of there being two teams on the pitch, the quality of said side etc.

Hall, for all his good attributes, was taken to the cleaners by Savinho, yet there appeared to be no adjustment made to try and combat that, even if it meant Barnes just dropping in and covering for ten minutes to try and wrestle a little control back.

Marmoush used the fact that Nick Woltemade isn’t a midfielder to consistently drop in behind him and find oceans of space between the two lines, and again nothing appeared to be done to combat it in game.

Man City were able to get to the byline repeatedly, so much so that their opening two goals came from those areas, and we seemed to be paralysed by indecision to try and combat it, with the wingers seemingly never told to drop in and cover. When those wingers were getting little joy from their fullbacks going the other way, they’re never asked to switch sides and have a go at the opposite fullback or even give them something different to think about.

The long balls and causing chaos in the box worked for the opening 25 minutes but once City worked it out, we never switched it up and tried short freekicks or corners, it was just keep doing the same thing and hope for different results, which ultimately killed the crowd and the game.

And these sorts of indecisions or poor in game management have been prevalent across the entire season, and its little wonder we’ve conceded as many late goals as we have, been as disjointed as we have, and generally looked such a poor side at times this season.

Barcelona next, and we will have to be much better to get anything to take to the Camp Nou.

Keep the faith. HWTL