Eddie Howe

[Displayname]

2 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

You get no credit for a solid rearguard action these days?

We did put up a hell of a fight in defense. But we still had Milan players tripping themselves over trying something fancy in our box. We arent getting out of that alive when we face Mbappe.

[Groundhog63]

3 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

You get no credit for a solid rearguard action these days?

Clean sheets don't count anymore

[AJ9]

20 minutes ago, Yorkie said:

 

Interesting observation.  will keep an eye out for that. 

Hernandez roamed quite a bit into central areas last night. 

[The College Dropout]

There's a massive gap between defence and midfield when we don't press. Been evident last season but more so from GW1 this season. Keeps happening.

 

When we do press the CBs can press whoever drops into those positions.

 

Our system last season was largely personnel-dependent and not working this season. We progressed the ball greatly through Joelinton and Willock running with the ball last season. Without them - we can't pass our way up the field. Bruno passed and ran his way up the pitch for us. He's being man-marked and struggling more to do either - we haven't had an answer to that. He's been man-marked for a long time now.

 

His post-match presser proves he's trying to play in a similar way to last season. But the lads aren't able to do it. And we continue not to have a functional plan B.

 

It's not even just a poor "attack". The build-up is slow and ponderous. We rarely get the ball to our best attackers in semi-dangerous positions. 

 

 

Edited September 20, 2023 by The College Dropout

[Thumbheed]

Aston Villa 3 

Man City 0

Liverpool 1

Brighton 1

Brentford 3

AC Milan 0

 

How many point would people have expected from the above run in?

 

I'd have said 8 realistically.

 

If anything, I'm slightly encouraged by the fact we're probably on par with expectations and it hasn't even clicked for us yet. 

 

 

[Wilson]

23 minutes ago, Coffee_Johnny said:

25 shots to 6; 9 on target to 1. Come on, man. We were beaten 3-1 by Brighton and the shots totals were 15 to 9 (6 to 2 on target).
Great CL result for us but we definitely had the rub of the green. 

 

 

Regardless, we weren't beaten and won't ever agree that we 'should have been comfortably beaten'. 

 

 

[The College Dropout]

13 minutes ago, Thumbheed said:

Aston Villa 3 

Man City 0

Liverpool 1

Brighton 1

Brentford 3

AC Milan 0

 

How many point would people have expected from the above run in?

 

I'd have said 8 realistically.

 

If anything, I'm slightly encouraged by the fact we're probably on par with expectations and it hasn't even clicked for us yet. 

 

 

Nobody's worried about the points mate.

[Matt1892]

The worry for me is that he will carry on with the formation rather than looking to change it as part of the team evolving, which will still be enough to get 3 points against the weaker teams which you would expect with the players and money we have spent but leaves us exposed against the better opposition players and managers.

[Thumbheed]

5 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

Nobody's worried about the points mate.

 

I'm not sure what the point of this post is mate.

[Infinitely Content]

A different time and a different team, but at the beginning of the 2002-03 season, a season which has many parallels to our current one having finished 4th the prior year, and being presented with a difficult set of opening fixtures; we began with a comprehensive win at home, before failing to win in the next 5 games.

Bobby Robson, addressing the team’s form, said: “The fact that we finished 4th the year before meant that we knew we had a good side, it was just getting it together and we needed perhaps a bit more time. So I wasn’t too worried about it, I knew the staff was quality and it would be okay."

Recalling that season, and how it unfolded after the difficult start can offer us much reassurance. As fans, myself included, we can sometimes get too enmeshed in over-scrutinising perceived defects in the team’s performances, drawing broad conclusions to what are marginal factors. Despite the fact we’re not being swept away by teams and have been relatively competitive in most of our fixtures, we’re looking for the team’s identity we became so accustomed to last season, and we draw the conclusion that our identity has become entirely dismantled and we’re a long way off from where we should be. Sir Bobby’s quote above calmly suggests that with a good team and good staff, which we all know we currently have, you’re never too far away. It’s the story of Edgar Allan Poe’s Purloined Letter; in that perhaps the solution is not to tear the room apart in search of the answer, but is instead found in the most subtle and unquantifiable of places. A shift from within the team, that we as on-looking fans searching for an answer in all of our analysis can not perceive or understand. For me this is the magic of football, as much as many like to believe, it is not just a scientific game of numbers and tactics, those are the basics which any professional team have in their grasp. The turning of the tide of a team’s fortunes and performance is often found those subtle places, invisible to the eye.

I feel confident that many of us will be looking back at the start of this season in a few months time thinking to ourselves "why was I so doubtful of this team?" and “what was I so worried about?”

[RobsonsWonderland]

You know I would be more worried if we had last year's fixtures and results.

 

It wasn't until Fulham we kicked into gear

[nufc123]

41 minutes ago, Thumbheed said:

 

I'm not sure what the point of this post is mate.

The concern is not about points but performance

[Dr Venkman]

1 hour ago, The Prophet said:

 

100%.

 

That's why it doesn't bother me too much. The creativity problems are being overstated, but the attack does look incoherent at times. I have every faith we'll overcome that.

Bothers me short term because we’re a difficult watch at the moment, not bothered long term.

[Thumbheed]

7 minutes ago, nufc123 said:

The concern is not about points but performance

Yeh, I referenced that in my post.

 

We're at par points wise and haven't played particularly well, I'll worry when we don't play well and don't get the points we expect.

[Coffee_Johnny]

18 minutes ago, RobsonsWonderland said:

You know I would be more worried if we had last year's fixtures and results.

 

It wasn't until Fulham we kicked into gear

We were good against Forest—very one sided game and could have been a much higher score line. 

[nufc123]

1 minute ago, Thumbheed said:

Yeh, I referenced that in my post.

 

We're at par points wise and haven't played particularly well, I'll worry when we don't play well and don't get the points we expect.

Agree. Next few games will get us some answers.

[Thumbheed]

On a side note, I don't think it's too far fetched to say we haven't played well as a result of the quality of the opposition we've faced. 

 

How many times last year was it the other way round for opposing fans who claimed they were shit and we just caught them on a bad day when in reality it was because we made them look bad?

 

Same thing's happening now. 

[The College Dropout]

55 minutes ago, RobsonsWonderland said:

You know I would be more worried if we had last year's fixtures and results.

 

It wasn't until Fulham we kicked into gear

We played well in most of those games. Looked a bit toothless on occasion. We got less points than we deserved. The good results followed pretty good performances.

 

This time - the results are pretty much on par in the league and above par in the CL. But we're playing much worse which doesn't bode well for the future (except the fixtures are as good as it gets in the league).

[Wullie]

25 minutes ago, Thumbheed said:

On a side note, I don't think it's too far fetched to say we haven't played well as a result of the quality of the opposition we've faced. 

 

How many times last year was it the other way round for opposing fans who claimed they were shit and we just caught them on a bad day when in reality it was because we made them look bad?

 

Same thing's happening now. 

 

That was certainly true at Brighton and Man City, and even against Liverpool who were superb with ten men, but I didn't feel that last night at all, I thought that we were really poor on our own terms, at least with the ball, a lot of sloppy passing and decision making. Milan didn't really have to win the ball back much as we just kept giving it back to them under minimal pressure.

[The College Dropout]

35 minutes ago, Thumbheed said:

On a side note, I don't think it's too far fetched to say we haven't played well as a result of the quality of the opposition we've faced. 

 

How many times last year was it the other way round for opposing fans who claimed they were shit and we just caught them on a bad day when in reality it was because we made them look bad?

 

Same thing's happening now. 

I don't really agree. Last season we played well against City H & A and only got 1 point. We played well against Liverpool H & A and got 0 points. 

 

AC Milan really let us play. And we offered nothing.

 

This season Liverpool were lucky to beat us again. But we didn't play particularly well ourselves. We were much worse against Milan but got a better result. The result is mostly down to the quality of the opposition. But the performance is our own.

 

 

Edited September 20, 2023 by The College Dropout

[Stottie]

7 minutes ago, Wullie said:

 

That was certainly true at Brighton and Man City, and even against Liverpool who were superb with ten men, but I didn't feel that last night at all, I thought that we were really poor on our own terms, at least with the ball, a lot of sloppy passing and decision making. Milan didn't really have to win the ball back much as we just kept giving it back to them under minimal pressure.

Gordon (normally our most accurate passer after Botman), Tonali and Burn all had under 70% passing accuracy vs. Milan. That's the entire left side. There were also numerous miscontrols and lost tackles across the whole team.

 

https://fbref.com/en/matches/19789895/Milan-Newcastle-United-September-19-2023-Champions-League

 

It sounded like it was quite hot and balmy during the match. Some of our lads looked knackered at the end.

[Gallowgate Toon]

3 minutes ago, Stottie said:

Gordon (normally our most accurate passer after Botman), Tonali and Burn all had under 70% passing accuracy vs. Milan. That's the entire left side. There were also numerous miscontrols and lost tackles across the whole team.

 

https://fbref.com/en/matches/19789895/Milan-Newcastle-United-September-19-2023-Champions-League

 

It sounded like it was quite hot and balmy during the match. Some of our lads looked knackered at the end.

The right hand side averaged about 85% as a comparison and had the ball about twice as much. Whole pub went collectively mental after Burn put his 3rd pass under no pressure straight out 

[Groundhog63]

5 minutes ago, Stottie said:

It sunded like it was quite hot and balmy during the match. Some of our lads looked knackered at the end.

Not as barmy as some of the crack on here ?

[The Bonk]

21 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

I don't really agree. Last season we played well against City H & A and only got 1 point. We played well against Liverpool H & A and got 0 points. 

 

AC Milan really let us play. And we offered nothing.

 

This season Liverpool were lucky to beat us again. But we didn't play particularly well ourselves. We were much worse against Milan but got a better result. The result is mostly down to the quality of the opposition. But the performance is our own.

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure why some are giving you pelters on here for stating the obvious. We ALL felt robbed from the Liverpool games last year because the effort matched the performance, plus VAR did us dirty. 

We were pretty good against Liverpool for the better part of the game this year, but came undone with individual errors and some good finishing by Darwin Núñez (who hasn't scored in any other match, of course.  )

Felt like we used an underdog spirit to get ourselves up for the games and Howe has probably tried to shift that mindset mentally, tactically, while also integrating the quality we bought over the summer. The weirdest thing for me is we had a good pre season, which built up to a good home performance in our first match and has now come unravelled since that Liverpool defeat. I honestly didn't think we were that bad against Man City, but really came undone against Brighton. 

Regardless, I think we'll crack on from here and get much better as the season wears on. 

 

 

Edited September 20, 2023 by The Bonk

[andycap]

2 hours ago, RobsonsWonderland said:

You know I would be more worried if we had last year's fixtures and results.

 

It wasn't until Fulham we kicked into gear

Back then though even when the results weren't what we wanted we were creating chances to score and playing quite well. This time we are not doing either.