More proof Eddie Howe is working wonders at Newcastle as NINE incredible stats emerge

NUFC are canny impressive this season, aren’t they?

I’m still recovering from that nail-biting 0-0 draw away to league leaders Arsenal, a game I walked into weirdly relaxed.

We know there’s still a big gap in quality between our two sides, and although we fought hard and deserved that point, it was evident on the pitch. We’ve marvelled at how good Newcastle can be on the attack compared to recent years, but it was that impenetrable defence that really shone.

We’re the first team in the league to walk away from The Emirates with any points this season. Newcastle United are the first team Arsenal haven’t scored against since…Newcastle United, in April 2022. And those two stats aren’t the only newly mind-blowing ones we’ve achieved recently.

Thanks to that draw and Napoli’s defeat at Inter Milan in midweek, we’re now on the longest unbeaten run across the top five leagues in Europe. In that unbeaten run, we’ve chalked up six straight clean sheets (equaling a club record!) to put us at the top of the clean sheet table in the league with 11.

We haven’t conceded a goal in NINE HOURS of football. Imagine saying that under previous management?

At this stage last season, with 18 games under our belt, we had one win. This season, it’s only the one loss in 18 – and we can all agree that it was an undeserved one. This stat in itself is absolutely mental. We can also agree on the person largely responsible for all of this: Eddie Howe.

And the man himself has been smashing those records too. Eddie’s overtaken our beloved King Kev with the best points-per-game ratio at the club, averaging two a game in 2022. Only Kevin Keegan and Sir Bobby Robson appear in the rest of that top five list, managing during the years of the entertainers and Champions League football. Quite the impressive feat with a starting XI that has had at least six pre-takeover players in it.

Not content with just smashing ex-NUFC managerial records, Howe has become the first English manager to win 20 games in a single calendar year in the 21^st century. What a guy.

There was concern from a lot of supporters – myself included – about the World Cup bringing our momentum to a screeching halt. But while we didn’t get off to the most impressive start against Bournemouth, we still eked out a win. And at Leicester on Boxing Day, it was like Eddie’s rampant mags had never been away.

Leeds were tough to break down, and that was a hugely frustrating game. We weren’t clinical enough – but we’re still considerably more lethal going forward than we were a little over a year ago. And no matter how infuriating the game was, a draw at Arsenal was a sublime result.

It’s clear that the defence is going to be important in the rest of the season, but with Isak coming back imminently, we’re going to have more than one goalscoring option upfront (because as much as I love Chris Wood and recognise his important contributions, his goal return isn’t great).

It’s been easy all season for outsiders to write us off. To chalk up our run of form to momentum and money. But it’s also conveniently easy to forget that our record signing has been injured for the majority of our season, and so has our other goal machine, Callum Wilson.

It’s straightforward to call us a flash in the pan, but results, performances and statistics say otherwise.

For us, it’s easy to get swept up in this dramatic turnaround. And why shouldn’t we?

It’s easy to enjoy Newcastle United again.