Newcastle United collapsed to a bruising 1-4 defeat at St. James’ Park on Saturday lunchtime. A potential afternoon of new club records and the outside chance of inserting ourselves into the title race, or at least firmly into the top four, ended with one of the worst performances of the Eddie Howe era.
Justin Kluivert scored a hattrick and Milos Kerkez scored the other for the Cherries as they ran riot on Tyneside. Bruno scored what turned out to be a consolation for United.
Here are our five key takeaways from the game:
- Tactically outthought and outfought
Let’s get this straight right away, Bournemouth deserved to handsomely win that game. They were quicker, sharper, pressed better, won every 50-50, ran harder and had miles the better finishers and creators on the afternoon.
It was impressive just how dangerous they were with every attack, and how they easily bypassed our midfield to get at our slow central defenders causing them to have to backoff and panic on multiple occasions. They probably should’ve scored more than four in all honestly.
However, they are only allowed to perform another key aspect of their performance, shithousery, because the referee is **** weak.
They had 18 fouls to our seven and picked up six yellow cards, a ratio of 3:1 for fouls committed per yellow. Now I appreciate that not every tackle or contact is a yellow card but for them to only pickup their first deep into first half injury time is mental. When it’s the same player fouling over and over and over and he isn’t punished it lets them impose their physicality onto us. I’ve said for years that United are too nice and they were again on Saturday. Just look this Tyler Adam’s quote from after the game:
‘We tried to make the game as chaotic as possible, we hoped the referee would let things go and he did.’
It says it all – weak ref’s allow teams to get away with murder and Bournemouth certainly pulled a blinder on that point. Again, this is no shade on them, they’ve identified a weakness in the referee and exploited it to win the game in conjunction with their better all-round game – United needed to be cuter, play in the same mould and they failed. We may not like it, but we must stop being a soft touch on occasions like this because every other team in the league will do it.
- Anonymous Isak
Perhaps he was dazzled by the potential of seeing his name up in lights, but our star man had a stinker, and he had a selfish afternoon to boot. No way on this Earth should he have taken the freekick just outside the box late into second half injury time when Trippier is on the pitch, especially when I’m not even sure I’ve seen the Swede take a freekick in his entire life.
It obviously boils down to frustration, but he never even looked like scoring on Saturday, and it was disappointing that he didn’t appear to be able to lift himself when we desperately needed him to.
A bad day at the office but Bournemouth have given other teams a blueprint for how to nullify him, so Isak will need to find other ways to contribute against similar types of setups moving forward.
- Howe’s Bournemouth hoodoo continues
There’s no point losing your head over one defeat but a person prone to overanalysing might question why Eddie can’t seem to beat his old team? Is it a mental block, a subconscious desire not to upset the team he has a huge affinity for? This is all frustration talking of course but why didn’t, after 15 minutes, when it was obvious Bournemouth’s press was too much for our defensive line to handle, didn’t Eddie change the tactics to go longer and bypass the press? Much like Man City did against us a couple of years ago.
Eddie was unable to change the game tactically and when he looked to the bench to change the game instead, he obviously didn’t see much that he thought would be effective enough to make a real difference.
The players needed help today – Joelinton was completely gassed on Wednesday, yet he started here, why didn’t Miley come in and give Big Joe a rest? Miley’s technical level might’ve allowed us to better compete with their midfield press and the lad is never going to develop if he doesn’t play.
Eddie, honestly, it’s okay to change a winning team. Sometimes you need to counter certain specific threats or tell a player he is sitting the game out because he’s fatigued; instead we had a tired looking midfield three playing against a well drilled, extremely competent side who took us to the cleaners all afternoon.
- Strange Lewis Hall substitution
In another baffling move from the gaffer I felt he subbed the wrong fullback in the second half. Hall wasn’t enjoying his best game, but Livramento was awful on the right side as Semenyo tore him to pieces. He just couldn’t get up to the speed of the game, was caught out of position multiple times and was ineffective going forward.
Then to sub Hall and shift Tino over to the left side was simply bizarre. Tino wilted further on the left side as his weaker foot was exposed as he was forced onto it and inside into the traffic of the crowded midfield.
A strange one from the gaffer but he certainly wasn’t alone in that.
- This game must be a blip
So, after 800 words of negativity, I’ll try to find a slither of positivity. United have, unequivocally, the worst team in the Premier League up next in Southampton. A team who could perhaps go on to be the worst team in Premier League history points wise.
Southampton showed on Thursday night that despite their neat and tidy patterns of play, they are devoid of any finishing ability and confidence. Granted our own confidence will have taken a battering this afternoon but if the team can turn Saturday into a blip and get the three points away to the Saints next weekend then this game will soon be forgotten.
Keep the faith.