Danny Murphy’s theory on Newcastle’s inability to hold on to leads

Eddie Howe has addressed the fact that his Newcastle United side can't seem to kill off games and often throws away leads.

The stat that Newcastle have dropped 25 points from winning positions has been regurgitated ad nauseam since the full-time whistle blew at Selhurst Park on Sunday after the Magpies let a one-goal lead turn into a 2-1 defeat in the final throes of the game against Crystal Palace.

While Howe acknowledged the issue in his post-match press conference, he had no answers for why it keeps happening, pointing to a potential psychological issue.

It has been happening all season, and the lack of ideas and answers is a huge concern.

Danny Murphy blames Newcastle's intensity for their problems

Danny Murphy addressed it on talkSPORT on Monday, and the former Liverpool man may have actually hit the nail on the head, pointing to how Newcastle plays as a potential reason for why they concede so many late goals.

"Well, I've talked about this before, and I think it's more obvious to me why they struggle. They play such high-intensity football at the start of games. They go after teams, and it's great to watch, especially when they're at home. They really steamroll the teams at times, but you can't play that way for 90 minutes. And when they have to fall back into defensive mode and be more tactical and more concentrated, they struggle.

"I think that I'm a big fan of Eddie's, as you know, but I think that's part of it. Their main strength is when they really are physical with teams, and they get on the front foot, and that's why they tend to go in leads in games and then lose them because as the game gets stretched and drawn out - the defenders haven't been great really, only (Malick) Thiaw has really done okay the rest have struggled, there's been a lot of injuries at center half and I think that's probably the main reason I see when I watch Newcastle so often good in first halves and more poor in second halves."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN3lGXLziNQ&t=127s

Murphy is getting somewhere, but still wide of the mark

It's a very good point that Murphy makes regarding the high-intensity football draining the players' batteries; however, there are a couple of points to be made on this theory.

If you watched the game on Sunday, you couldn't possibly say that anything about that was high intensity from Newcastle. After a three-week break, we thought our players would come out of the traps like greyhounds, but they looked so sluggish and devoid of ideas.

In some games, that theory stands up; we can't use that as the excuse for Palace. And we can't use injuries as an excuse for Sunday either, as we had arguably our first-choice back-four in from the start.

There's still a lot more work to be done to discover the real reason behind what is going on with the players this season, but at least Murphy has tried, which is more than what our own coaches seem to be doing.