Newcastle United capitulated to an embarrassing 3-1 defeat against West Ham United at the London Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
Considering a West Ham preview I read suggested United should win the game with only nine men, such has been the dearth of quality shown by the Hammers so far this season, this has to go down as one of the worst performances under Eddie Howe.
Jacob Murphy opened the scoring for United before goals from Lucas Paqueta, a Sven Botman OG, and Tomas Soucek secured the win for the beleaguered home side.
Here is everything I disliked from the game in part one of two pieces I’ve written on Sunday’s horror show:
The Joelinton problem
Eddie Howe cannot keep playing that midfield three away from home. It’s let down by Big Joe’s lack of technical quality, meaning we cannot retain possession or build any pressure on opponents as all they do is mark (sometimes double mark) Bruno and Sandro, let the play progress through Joelinton and he invariably picks the wrong pass or passes it sideways or backwards.
We all love Big Joe, his redemption arc at United is the stuff of miracles and our £40m man deserves plaudits for it. He will continue to be a key player when we face bigger teams at home, or in games where we need to be more physical, but he is actively hampering the team with his lack of technical quality when compared to his peers.
I’m not sure what Lewis Miley did wrong to find himself out of the side and if I was the youngster I’d be knocking on the manager’s door in the morning and asking exactly why.
Wake up, Anthony Gordon
The title of this point is pretty provocative but I’m starting to get sick of Gordon not turning up in “regular” games. He was atrocious on Sunday, and was rightly hooked at half-time after running down blind alleys all half, and that now makes it 19 games in the league without a goal or an assist. It’s not acceptable for a player to just turn up in the “big” games, (and as an avid hater of international football) or just your country— it has a whiff of the Michael Owen’s about it.
We’re consistently told that Gordon is a cerebral footballer who reads up on the psychology of sporting greats, but for a lad who has set his stall so high for United, he is struggling hugely in the Premier League, and if it continues, he will not be on a plane going to the World Cup this summer.
However, Gordon isn’t alone in being a player who only seems to get up for the “big” games at the minute; the same can be said of Botman, Joelinton, Murphy, and Bruno, who were all passengers at various points throughout the game, and Barnes and Elanga offered nothing when they came on too.
Pope disaster-class
It’s safe to say that the regular number one didn’t cover himself in glory on Sunday. Pope was weak for Paqueta’s long-range equaliser, letting it squirm under his hands, and he should’ve caught the initial cross to which he elected to punch.
The own goal is unlucky, but better positioning from the keeper may’ve saved us, in what was a crucial period in the game; and for the third, the ball squeezes between his legs, but Pope turns like the QE2 trying to get out of the harbour to seal our fate.
This’ll probably seem harsh considering Pope already has six clean sheets, but it’s so obvious that the management have wanted to evolve past him for the last two seasons with the failed pursuit of James Trafford, that continuing to play Pope just feels like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
All this in a week where his direct rival, Ramsdale, has a pretty storming game doing the sweeping Pope is normally praised for, and is a very obvious upgrade with the ball at his feet.
Part two coming soon.
Said it before big Joe is good against the teams with a good quality midfield solely because he’s very good at disrupting and breaking up their play when it’s down to him doing something other than scrapping and disrupting then it’s not so good.
Would be nice to see a midfield 3 of Bruno, Miley, Tonali or Bruno, Tonali, Ramsey or the no1 choice for me would be resign Anderson
Absolutely glorious(Quote)
Anderson is a romantic solution, but totally impractical. The fee being quoted is ridiculous £100m. His performance profile is not what is needed to complement Tonali – Bruno. In situations like that we need someone who can break through defences. Someone like Nico Paz from Como would cost half that fee.
PremAndUp(Quote)
I dont think miley or willock and kraft are prem players and a few more we have. lets be honest some of the buys Eddie Howe has done have been very poor and he is looking at Mc Tominay what a joke its not cheap players we want its players that can hold there own with top level teams. The story is we just say nothing and wait till the next game time we spoke up about the money we pay to watch rubbish and then they might bring in better players.
Keith Richardson(Quote)
What I hate about this blog.
Young’s constant whining.
If you are really concerned about how we can’t keep hold of the ball maybe, instead of sucking up to him, which is fashionable, you should take a closer look at Bruno.
He’s constantly falling over looking for fouls, passing to nobody, giving away fouls, and it’s almost as if he has no control over his temper at all!
freddd(Quote)
One of the main issues apart from Bruno always being caught in possession and Joelinton not being a footballer is we have two very good fullbacks who are out injured and the wingers are not effectively supported, we have Burn filling in Trippier is past it and Krafth not up to it or lack of game time.
We have a centre forward who is more of a Martin Peters than a true centre forward and our wingers are misfiring.
The team seem incapable of playing a new system to suit who we’ve got.
Joseph(Quote)
Like you say the red would be stupid it’s more me wishing he never left than a realistic solution.
A couple of players we were linked with in the past I wouldn’t mind seeing here Frattesi, Kone even Gallagher how realistic and how much they’d cost I couldn’t say
Absolutely glorious(Quote)
#fee
Absolutely glorious(Quote)