The good, bad and ugly from Newcastle’s 1-1 draw at Fulham
Newcastle United drew 1-1 with Fulham on Saturday to arrest a run of five defeats in seven games. United were improved from the previous back-to-back surrenders against Everton, with even the manager admitting post-match that things haven’t been right.
The goals came via a Jacob Murphy raker from range and a flicked effort from Rodrigo Muniz.
Here’s my one good, one bad and one ugly from the game:
Good: Something to build on
Considering the double embarrassing performances against Everton, it would be churlish not to acknowledge that there was an improvement in the performance.
There was an almost rickety obstinance to our performance which, despite Fulham having eleven efforts on goal and Hornicek making a couple of decent saves, meant we kept the high-quality chances on our goal to a minimum.
Despite personal concerns around Thiaw’s performances this season, it was the right decision to restore him to the side. The almost dropping back into a six at the back, with Murphy tucking in behind Dedic and Nico sitting deep, meant we were difficult to break down, apart from the one obvious situation.
We’re still toothless in attack and seem incapable of scoring the simple goals teams score in this league week after week. But if you can be tight defensively, then you will always be in games, and it will protect our horribly misfiring forwards if we only need one goal to get a result from games.
The central midfield experiment of Nico and Steur appeared to be a success too, and it would be one I’d persist with, despite the manager’s protestations that the Dutchman was feeling it physically, which is understandable considering his limited game time.
Bad: Wissa frustrations continue
Whilst I can accept Burn would have been offside otherwise, the fact that Wissa is now actively stopping his own team from scoring appears to have completed his heel turn.
I may be in the minority, but I think it’s a soft decision. You see grappling and holding like that every week go unpunished, and it just felt like the perfect opportunity for the ref to apply the completely subjective new rules. I can almost guarantee that if that happened to a side wearing red, the goal would have stood.
But back to Wissa: he must be smarter, release the hold quicker and take the ref out of the equation. He’s now actively hurting his own team (and I would argue has been for a while) with a combination of boneheaded decision-making, missing sitters and penalties.
I would consider any half-decent offer for him in January, perhaps enough just to cover his wages, and recall Woltemade from his loan at Juventus, as the German just must be better than what we are seeing from the DR Congo international.
Ugly: A shambles in our own box again
Osula must take a lot of the blame for the Fulham goal for meekly trying to win a free-kick and losing possession when we were well placed to win the game, but we were, once again, an absolute shambles in our own box.
Watch the clip and, defensively, we are all over the place to the point of it just being ugly to look at.
Whether it’s Burn being horribly deep, a mere couple of yards ahead of Hornicek, or Murphy playing in the right-back role, highlighting just why the six at the back I praised before will always have gaps in it, with terrible defensive positioning allowing Berge to run off him with ease.
Thiaw continued his awful habit of putting weak blocks in on shots and dangerous crosses with a tepid attempt, while Hall was frankly just weak, allowing Muniz to dink the ball home – a striker who hadn’t scored for fifteen months.
Our defence is a huge weakness and one that isn’t easily solved with the personnel we have available and our attacking full-backs. It puts so much pressure on the “six” to be defensively responsible, and we haven’t got that balance right yet this season.
All things considered, I think this performance was a step in the right direction, but with Arsenal next, we’ll need a whole lot more than a step to get something out of that game.
Keep the faith. HWTL.
