When will Newcastle actually win the Premier League?

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When Will Newcastle Win The Premier League?

Newcastle United surged into the world of Champions League football after an exhilarating second season under Eddie Howe. After strengthening the squad by bringing in young, key signings including Sandro Tonali and Harvey Barnes, Newcastle seemed ready to reach new heights at the start of this season.

But, the Toon find themselves languishing in midtable alongside Chelsea and Wolves. Results aren’t turning in their favour and injuries continue to plague their squad.

What can Newcastle do to turn their fortunes?

Chris Hamill, JJ Bull and Jon Mackenzie are joined by Jacob Whitehead, The Athletic’s Newcastle reporter, to figure out when Newcastle will be able to win the Premier League.

This is The Athletic’s Week in Football.

#newcastle #premierleague #newcastleunited

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00:00 Intro
00:50 How are Newcastle fans feeling?
03:45 Profit and Sustainability Rules
05:41 Expected Points Table
09:40 Squad Building vs Man City
21:02 Tactical Evolution vs Liverpool
30:11 Why isn’t it working now?
31:13 Injuries
34:30 How can Newcastle evolve?
39:05 What should Newcastle do now?
42:57 Concluding Questions
47:10 When will Newcastle win the Premier League?

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Music sourced from Epidemic Sound
Additional footage sourced from AP Newsroom

after finishing fourth last season Newcastle find themselves languishing in mid table behind the likes of Brighton West Ham and wolves although the underlying numbers do suggest they’ve been a bit unlucky here to address whether their bid to become a major force in the Premier League is still on track is JJ bull John McKenzie and Jacob Whitehead now to help give this episode a little more Focus we’re going to look at how Newcastle AR conduct themselves on two fronts Squad building and tactical Evolution we’re then going to map out what they’re doing onto the plan of two previous Premier League winners to see what point the tune are at but first Jacob welcome you covered Newcastle for the second half of last season did fans think that ascendancy would continue or did they expect a bit of regression this campaign can you give us an insight into Newcastle fans psyche think about where Newcastle fans had been they had really been in the well under Mike Ashley not just investment but also playing style so suddenly when you’re given something good something to hold on to imagine then turning around and being like right I think we’re actually going to slip back a bit there was an element of understanding I think that there’s the understanding that fourth place was not aberration but an over performance and that that could have slipped back slightly this season but there’s so much other stuff to be excited about there was Big Money signings from Italy as a Champions League campaign even if they were say going to finish fifth or sixth in the league I think there was hope that there going to be other things to cling on to whether that has happened or not I’m sure we’re going to dive into I’m interested as to how the fans view that decline because we can sit here as pundits and talk about it all day long but I’m always interested to hear why fans think that suddenly these kind of declines happen it’s become quite weaponized and polarized is pretty much anything involving Premier League football does nowadays especially with Newcastle and the situation around their ownership I’d say Loosely there are two camps there’s one saying look this has been a regression last season we were proud about this intensity which we had like there’s certain games where big six teams came to St James’s Park and were absolutely harried away from stuff and this season it’s not quite happened if they’ve been 5% off their levels but at the margins Newcastle are playing at with that style just 5% off can leave these absolutely huge holes which can look really really bizarre there’s one early season game against Brighton hoval at the AMX where they absolutely ripped apart and people are thinking well this is not the edio side which we’ve come to know and that has continued throughout large parts of the season but and this is a really big bot of mitigation injuries of course lots of teams have all had them but Newcastle don’t have the squad depth of lots of other teams who might have had to deal with them and injuries don’t just affect the Personnel but they also impact kind of the evolution of a team’s playing style Newcastle effects have been locked into a way of playing which they haven’t been able to change under how when he’d have liked to this season starting the same Midfield three who are progressively getting more and more exhausted which leads towards that lack of intensity reality like anything it’s probably a bit in the middle how probably could have introduced other ways to play earlier but there are a lot of mitigating factors at play feels like it’s been a season of extremes there’s been some real high highs the win over PSG beat both Manchester clubs in the carabal cup didn’t they but then there’s been moments where house had an entire 11 out like you said a lot of mitigating circumstances I wanted to talk to you while you’re here about some of the off the pitch stuff too that might hinder their progress moving forward as well as their sort of medium-term Outlook so can you take us for a Whistle Stop tour of PSR and things of that nature so PSR is effectively a rule which um is meant to govern Club spending so that they remain sustainable and you don’t get situations where kind of these great cultural institutions are going bankrupt from a Newcastle perspective that why is that really why well I’m the Looking Glass now if we get sort of deep into Realms of conspiracy theories let me explain let me explain a very convincing one here yeah um in the one hand it is meant to stop clubs going bus but there’s a reason why why the League’s top six teams were so Keen toly introduce it because it does effectively put a cap on spending the rul is that over a rolling threeyear period clubs are not not allowed to make losses of more than 105 million there’s all sorts of weird kind of stipulations which can make that number go up or down but that’s the essential basis of it now Newcastle have done a lot of that spending right up to the cap they didn’t have many salable Assets in their squad at all the only sale they’ve made of any notes has been alen and maximan and they have brought in a stack of players over the last two or three transfer Windows which now they at a bit of a plateau they’ve done all of this different stuff to try and grow their revenue there’s been ing Saudi Arabia friendlies at St James’s Park there’s going on tours to the other side of the world there’s signing a new kit deal with Adidas there’s quite a lot of associated moral issues with several of those this is reality which they’re dealing with as a club and that is something which can be critiqued it’s probably not the place to dive into it too deeply here um but it means that as they’re trying to build their squad they are effectively going to start running into a brick wall where they need to make sales if they’re going to continue to evolve that’s where a big decision is going to happen this summer as they look to both evolve their playing style and evolve their squads and they’re going to have to do it without the death touch of Dan Ashworth who’s obviously on his way to Manchester United now like I said at the start of the show Newcastle have been a bit unfortunate According to some expected points models but just how unfortunate here’s Ruben Pinda as he takes to the streets to ask if anyone can guess I’m outside Wembley asking fans if they can guess which team should be in the top half of the Premier League table according to expected points let’s see what they have to say Newcastle move up Newcastle go up Newcastle down Newcastle down even further down than they are they’re playing bad man Liverpool top I think Liverpool going to be top um and if you look lower down the table westan will be sitting sitting a bit L like Ninth at the moment Villa exceeding themselves this year Newcastle yeah Newcastle at least Fifth and Villa lower Villa lower okay any any other movement Manchester United lower Manchester City move up MH uh Liverpool move down West Ham go up West Ham go up yeah what about those those ones down the bottom West Ham Brighton wolves Newcastle any any movement there uh Newcastle under performing this year without doubt I’d say Newcastle should be doing better Newcastle should be doing better I’d say Tottenham higher expected points Man United and West Ham might do better they might go up and Newcastle might go up I’d probably say Newcastle go up uh and they already s the Ws uh Manchester City should be like I’d say second rather than third uhhuh and also I think Brighton I think should be about sixth I think sixth yeah and also Manchester United um I’d say where four um fourth is man united would be higher I would say man united should be lower I think I think it’s going to be weird I think wolves wolves are going to be higher I think I thought wolves would be lower I think Villa go down surely we would be in there top half Chelsea cuz we missed so many chances Newcastle higher expected points I think Newcastle have to be higher no you don’t think so I just don’t know I never know with Newcastle just Eddie how’s just changed so much as a coach over the last five maybe Newcastle higher to be fair they are probably better than that Newcastle will definitely come up 100% I think they’re better than M Hampton and Brighton this season I feel like Newcastle should be about six or seven maybe so you’ve all got something right and you know but you’ve also got something very wrong so ited Newcastle Newcastle are fifth according to expected points so you were right okay Chelsea are sixth wow Manchester United are not in the top 10 okay so the model that Ruben and his hat used there was obviously understat which puts Newcastle as high as fifth would you say their efforts this season are representative of that heady height yeah well of course other models are available and other models will give different different heights on the table but basically what what an expected points model is doing is taking the XG for and against in games and working out the likelihood of what points you would get from those underlying numbers um interestingly if you look at for example the the opter expected goals tables Newcastle are very much mid-table on that on that um on that metric so again 51 goals for 49 against basically they may have been unlucky in indiv idual games which is why they would get bumped up the um the expected points table but they’re still performing around mid-table in terms of some of the underlying numbers as well so I think it’s a bit of a pinch of salt on this one they’ve definitely got gotten worse even if they have got a little bit unlucky this season well expect a John short on newcastle’s game State imminently JJ let’s talk transfers because we want to hold Manchester City up here as an example of how to build the squad turn a middling team into a title winning team after amount of campaigns and if we were to compare what Newcastle are doing now with what city did back then what point would the uh tune be at well man city are the best example to try and I guess compare them to because they had the similar situation lots of money came in and they had to build a club that was mid-table and turned them into Champions and now if you look at where Man City were when they were bought uh they were mid-table they were I think they finished ninth when Sven gor Erikson was the manager if you recall that and then Mark Hughes came in and that’s where they were right so after that they managed to win the Premier League within four years and they did it by we can pretty much divide the man City’s Club development into three distinct categories one is floor raising raising the floor another is ceiling raising raising the ceiling another is adding more floors to the house to make it taller and shinier like a like a flat like you have to live they want to add a new stand to St James’s Park well that’s exactly it or more like no one can afford a house you have to all live in small box departments were all part of the Rat Race now fantastic now manity have all the money but they had a mid-table team as we said now what they’ve done is they didn’t just splash all the money and go kind of nuts with it they were quite sensible when they initially came in that changed football maybe culture forever in that Sky Sports transfer deadline they became a thing um because all of a sudden they came in trying to buy baratov they ended up signing a big Mary signing in Rabino at the time and then they signed Joe as well so a lot of money went in straight away but the real first transfer window was in January when they signed some sensible transfers and those sensible transfers were people like n young who was very important in the title winning game remember he came on as a substitute later on when B passed to Aguero another big signing very sful indeed yeah Craig bamy Wayne Bridge Shay given now Joe har was a keeper at the time but these are players who are Premier League ready they raised the the the floor so you want to try and raise the level of your team at the very at the floor level so that the whole team is better so that way you’re average rting FIFA goes up uh not by adding better ones at the top but by getting rid of all the rubbish ones at the bottom that’s the idea you raise the floor build the foundations and you build towards what the team is going to be and you want to assemble a core of players who get on with each other F or a team spirit of sort and a kind of team that the fans can bond with and therefore you can build upon that that’s step one that’s step one and from comparison Newcastle where low spending M table relegation like um Jacob saying when when P PF is that we call them piff yeah the Magic Dragon and they bought them in October but had to wait until January to do the same thing when they spent all the money now they went for a big signing in gimash but still quite sensible he’s one of the best players best midfielders in the world probably uh who was be available he was at Leon at the time uh and would you just be able about to get him so they got him for a bit of money and that helped them build a Midfield which is the weakest part of the team I would say at the time then Kieran trippier incredibly sensible signing i’ compare that to Man City signing Gareth Barry in their second season uh second window or third window really in that he’s a not multipositional but you can play a couple positions he’s a leader the kind of the leader of the gang that you want in that team you can build around him he becomes a captain and he is just the exact standard of player you want International level Champions League level player so you’re already raising the floor and starting to make them a bit better bloody loves a yellow card as well he loves a yellow card Gareth Barry that’s good loves it laps them up well that’s nice I’ve interrupted yeah yeah that’s fine I don’t mind that it gives me time to look at what I’m talking about next I thought that I was trying to buy you a little bit of time well that’s good no the manager at the time was Mark Hughes now Mark Hughes was fired um and in comes Roberto manini Who is the Eddie how I would say of this project because Newcastle sacked or let go of Steve Bruce and in came Eddie how now this is what they did so over the next few years what man city did very well was sign three or four key players per window so no more than that and really no more than four key players over a whole season because if you buy them all at once and put them in you stabilize the core of the team that’s what happen to Chelsea um and that’s what they tried to avoid but over the three windows that Newcastle have bought in well compared to Man City basically had company who’s signed by Hughes actually but l got yurri David Silva Gareth Barry James Milner Carlos TZ who were the core of the team that ended up winning that premier league title and Newcastle brought in trippier botman gimash tanali Isa Gordon Pope Barnes would he count yeah as a core you think so there’s time still I mean he’s he’s so vers he can play either sides Seena is good hardworking good on his Squad dep right so you reason the floor with Harry bar he’s not going to take you to the next level but he brings you up and makes your whole Squad better so at this point Man City having won the Premier League they in this they’re now in the ceiling raising section of my TED Talk and uh the ceiling raising bit is probably where Newcastle are at the moment so they signed Sandro tale CU they reached the Champions League way ahead of schedule and this is the problem they’ve got so um if you are in the Champions League do you either uh accelerate your spending and go for players above where you are and possibly disrupt the harmony you’ve built or do you want to continue on a strategic pathway and tanali was a ceiling raising player do you think or was it always going to be built this way in strategy the intent was that he would be the ceiling raising player yeah the word people were using lot was unlock when they signed him not necessarily because of tanali himself but what he’d allow the players around him do there’s theory that having him would allow Bruno gim to be freed up so rather than always having him at the base he’d be able to be a bit more creative and almost have Tali back there to hold the for but then the rest of them were all the rest of ss back when they were more Squad players or long-term players yeah livero Lewis Hall like really good young players because this is the other thing Newcastle are competing in a different world entirely to what man city were so ffp was it not really the same thing or was it I don’t really know they just spent loads of money right at the time you got a lot more for your money then Newcastle looking at spending 35 million on Lewis Hall uh Anthony Gordon good player a lot of money to spend on him Harvey Barnes is like 38 million or something like that it’s a lot of money just to raise your floor now and obviously then they catch up to that ceiling really quickly of the the spending ceiling of ffp so that’s kind of one of the big problems they’ve got they can’t quite grow the way they need to they got to do it a lot slower and so they’ve had to look for players who are younger who will get to that level so that cost a bit of money now and that’s kind of the problem um but that’s what city did they grew steadily with steady improvements started raise the ceiling uh and when they won the league it was hard to maintain that so once they hit that title winning thing they dropped off a little bit the next season they’re in the ceiling raising part now I think you can compare that probably to Newcastle right now having get to the champions league is like almost winning a title now because you can’t win against City and Liverpool at the moment um or maybe someone will this season but that’s the problem right so you’ve hit that ceiling and then you drop off a little bit so it looks like maybe Ed if Eddie’s a manini manager he got dinged the year after um and they brought in Pelini when results didn’t go the way they want so Eddie how might be the long-term planning manager but uh if he doesn’t hit the targets along their strategic growth they’ll have a a big line they want to climb up the hill do you think he’ll be given more time because like you said it’s harder to raise the ceiling now because you get less bang for your book well I think cuz they’re in this period this period of growth where he has assembled the squad you want to keep him there so that uh he’s fostering it cuz they’re not meant to win the league yet this is the thing they’re meant to be growing and so you keep some consistency you don’t deviate from what you’ve got you’ve got things that Dan ashth behind the scene going away and they might last time I saw they were linked with the Benfica director it would be amazing to someone who brings in like young players develops him and’s got a good eye for if he doesn’t hit his targets I think they would quite happily get rid and bring someone else in who brings to the next level but they’ll be there maybe three four years I think in four years will be the time that they should be in Champions League every single season that’s what they’d want because then the next part once you’ve got to that bit where you’re solidified as a Champions League team that’s when you start adding to your house and make it taller build a skyscraper now man city did it by putting the blocks in place really early I don’t know how you build a new floor above your roof you ever tried that before no but imagine Dan Ashworth was their architect and now their architect is on gardening then you need the builders as well I guess you have to plan it first and then Man City planned it with begar atin and Sano who came in as a Pep Guardiola a colleagues it’s like on Grand designs where you’ve sort of pre-made these really funky things in a factory somewhere in Finland and then you ship them over and suddenly they’re all there and two floors spring up in about two weeks it’s exactly like that exactly the same I agree and so that’s what they did and Sano was on Grand designs and then brought in Pep Guardiola to make his house lovely and sexy and then of course that’s where you’ve got now the equivalent of what Newcastle might be aiming towards would be like who would be the equivalent pet Guardiola now who take you to another place and establish a playing style so that’s the new Newcastle to me it’s the Kevin ke always attack way you but you can’t always do that I me there’s element of what how does it’s interesting that they they they conceded and score more more per game than Keegan Newcastle ever did they are the entertainers uh 2X or something like that anyway so that’s where they are now and the equivalent might be someone like Javi Alonzo you’re not going to get right now but they’ll probably look in for three four years when they can bring that manager in that can take them to the Heights and glories of a potential Premier League win when uh Guardiola and Klo aren’t there anymore so to summarize through the lens of transfers Newcastle are at step two on the Man City buying success om meter I think they should be probably on floor raising but because they reached Champions League early they’ve maybe deviated slightly into ceiling raising which has made it a complex environment especially when the ceiling raising player you bring in is then banned for yeah a long time they’ve graduated step two too early now how has to sort of help manage expectation on that front yeah they still still they’ll still be in part one but um they’ve had to change it a little bit they even talk about it in that documentary in Amazon they talk about um how they’ve had to change because the injuries come in but they know they need to have better players for Champions League they weren’t planning for it quite so quickly I think there is one thing here which is worth mentioning though with Eddie how and his floor raising where almost Atlas likee his superpower as a coach is improving players on on the training field and that is why they’ve got better so quickly if you look at when he came in the amount of players who he’s already improved whether that’s jingon but there’s also Fabian Sher I think Joe willick a really good example before he was injured this season he was probably on the edge of the England squads I alaron became amazing all of a sudden Anthony Gordon this season is a different player to the one who was seen at everon I know he’s a new signing but that’s all Eddie how’s work there so there’s an extent to which his own good work doing that stuff on the training pitch has led to this problem where there’s not necessarily the infrastructure in behind to support it but when we’re talking about should Eddie how eventually be replaced by a better manager I think that his work actually improving the existing players outside of Tactical Systems outside of transfer really should be noted very diplomatic of you I like how you’ve pivoted from Grand designs to atlas there the range on this man he’s got it all John buying good players in isolation not good enough obviously have to match that up with a long-term plan on the pitch as well Jonathan uh something that another Premier League win in Liverpool did not right away under FSG took them a little while to get it correct didn’t it but then once things married up uh they made substantial progression so looking Jonathan H is it yeah full named it didn’t know that Jonathan McKenzie have you ever been a jonty my dad called me jonty for a bit I’ve been called JJ when I was when I when I was young I was known as JJ my mates now either call me MAA or jono I will never call you jonty that is Despicable right enough behind the scenes chat jonty uh looking back at Liverpool’s return from relative obscurity then two title winners is there a similar Crossroads that Newcastle find themselves at now in terms of evolving tactically to achieve something bigger in the future well I want to talk about Liverpool particularly as they developed under Jurgen klopp because I think there’s lots of similarities between Newcastle now and where Liverpool were at the beginning of klopp’s tenure namely because when Jurgen klopp comes into Liverpool he’s going to make he wants to build a team in the image of the teams that he’s built in the Bundesliga and what that that team is trying to do is control games M mainly out of possession so we know that joggen klopp comes in and talks about you know the famous quote about gagan pressing being the best number 10 um essentially he’s going to come in build this team where they they’re going to try and control games out of possession and um and and that’s where they’re going to get a lot of their upside Newcastle very very similar so what I want to do is just show you how similar the the Newcastle team of last season were to the Liverpool team early on in in klopp’s tenure let’s start off with the out possession stuff so um as we know teams like Newcastle and Liverpool want to press high up the field uh they’re going to try and destabilize opposition buildup and they’re going to do it in very similar way so we’ve got Newcastle here against Manchester United last season this is the home game uh Newcastle in a 433 which is very similar to what what Liverpool like to use and we’re going to look at an example from 1819 season where basically they’re set up in exactly the same way the idea is is that Manchester United going to try and build out the back that’s going to trigger a press from Newcastle is’s going to come in here block the pass back across Sam maximam is going to step up this leaves the fullback free so you’re you’re almost baiting that pass in when that comes in often you’ll see teams jump up fullback to fullback but in this instance what we see is the Newcastle Midfield just shifting around willick the outside midfielder on this side is going to jump up put Dow Under Pressure this leaves Momin free so GES GES is going to have to jump up again this is a little bit strange because often the central midfielder in a three will stay deeper and it’ll be the other midfielder who would go but we’ve got Newcastle pushing up gimes in this instance and everyone follows across and the idea now is you’ve got every everyone is marked player for player very hard to build up very intense pressing and and very and lots of distances as well right so Willock has to move all the way across here yes um we we can talk about how Newcastle have fallen off that’s because the amount of distance they’re expected to cover is so big that teams are are finding those spaces really narrow from the start right as well they start narrow it has to go wide every single time yeah so if man man united very different in so far as that they’ll start their their wide players much wider in that High Press whereas with Newcastle they’re within the space of of of the Box okay and if you go back and watch newcastle’s win over PSG from earlier this season the first goal of they forced PSG into m AK is from exactly this setup for absolutely so this is in unsettled possession for the opposition because the opposition don’t have the ball under control properly which is why they Newcastle going to be happy to jump up if Manchester United managed to build out and get what we call settled possession which is when they they they they basically have possession of the ball in their back line and the opposition have dropped off a little bit what we see then from uh Newcastle is they do drop off into into more of a passive press so they’ll go into something more like a 451 shape uh like this they’ll let the oppos the opposition obviously be pushed up the field they will let the let them have the ball and they’re actually quite passive most people wouldn’t think that um presses like this are quite passive but the idea is is that they want to start deep push the opposition back and as soon as the ball gets moving backwards towards a goalkeeper that’s when you trigger your really aggressive press everyone jumps high again you try and win the ball back in that instance so there was variety to how how pressed last season and it wasn’t just all like intensity which is what people focused on right yeah and and the same is true with right A lot of people think of Liverpool’s press as being just constantly intense but as we’ll see similar they’re going to press up high let’s go to the screen now they’re going to press up High um in these moments of unsettled possession for the opposition because the opposition doesn’t have control of the ball so it’s much easier to cause them problems soon as they get settled possession they’ll be a little bit more passive and they’ll try and force the opposition into playing the ball backwards that’s the trigger to then go aggressive because as soon as you’re playing away from your own goal becomes much harder to control it and that those are the triggers that they use to jump forward so this is an example here of like I say Liverpool versus Chelsea in in 1819 um and the same things are true right we’ve got the narrow front 1819 yeah 1819 yeah the old tactics Yogen cl’s been around for a while yeah you might have forgotten it but Newton Heath same same principles this is the famous is Liverpool team it’s not quite the the final iteration of that team but you’ve got your front three very narrow here in this instance the same thing’s going to happen if the ball comes out to rudiger Mana is going to push up firmino is GNA close the pitch on the other side and then we’ll have Milner jumping out to ASA K jums to help out Henderson follows him again it’s unusual that it’s not the outside midfielder on the other side is jumping up it’s actually the central midfielder as well rald will move around and again we’ve got the same situation where everyone’s marked on the same it’s literally exactly the same shape so um Eddie how’s clearly been watching early joggen Klo um Liverpool prob like coaching seminars together or something shared it yeah yeah and he spent some time out he probably he probably decided he wanted to play in this kind of way and was watching some of these early tapes back as well it’s similar situations when like klopp took over Liverpool and they were kind of mid-table right and so well they finished second under Rogers and then eighth and then that’s when Klo came in so I guess is the starting point you’re looking at how to build your Club tactics you look at well that’s what they did and so that’s a really good thing to coming in at a similar point and does that Duality have to exist in terms of the aggressive and the passive press because the aggressive form of it is so knackering I think in terms of like dropping off into the into this more passive press which is what Liverpool do as well so I’ve sh on the board here now settled possession the reason why lipo wouldn’t press aggressively here is because it’s just notth the it’s much easier for teams to play through you here so all you’re going to do is probably leave spaces open so you’re going to pick and choose the moments after you’ve got settled possession to then to then jump Liverpool slightly different from Newcastle I’d say because I think Newcastle they tend to be a bit flatter in the Midfield so their wide forwards drop right back um and whereas with Liverpool we’d see a little bit more of a of a narrowness here with with the the central midfielders jumping up to make sure that if the ball is pass through to a pivot they can they can jump on them but the principles are the same and the idea is is that you know if the ball comes into kante here say he’s the pivot they allow that pass on but kante probably is you know he’s under a lot of pressure now because there’s lots of players around him probably going to end up playing the ball back and that’s going to be a trigger then to jump into that high pressing moment again so in terms of the out of possession stuff this is basically exactly the same as what we’re seeing from klopp’s um from Ed how’s Newcastle what are they trying to do with the ball John yeah so when you’re a team like Newcastle or Liverpool under klopp one of the ways that you can play um in possession is you can be really direct and aggressive because you have the ability to win the ball back if you turn it over so a lot of teams will in the Premier League will be patient picking their spot to go forward because if you go forward too quickly you can be in danger of losing the ball and the ball’s going to come straight back at you and and you don’t want to get into these sorts of basketball games where where the ball’s going forwards and back as well yeah yeah you don’t want you don’t want that to happen but with with so with Newcastle s similar to Liverpool um under early Klo they they have the ability to be super Direct to go forward really quickly if they lose the ball they then have all of these fantastic like aggressive players who can then counter press to win it back yeah um so you lose the ball don’t worry win it back if you win it back you then have the opposition in in a in a bit of a chaotic game state which creates space for you then to be able to attack as well right so if you go forward lose the ball doesn’t matter because we might actually generate another attacking play as well um so again similar from what we see from Liverpool they the same the same kind of thing under early Klo get the ball forward quickly if you lose it counter press and you can generate chances yourself controlled aggression controlled aggression but it does cause problems right because if you’re relying on your Midfield in particular to win these second balls if you lose it going direct you want to have really physically Elite midfielders um and often physically Elite midfielders come at the expense of creativity in in Midfield so Liverpool had this problem early on the clock you know you’ve got Jordan Henderson you’ve got James Miler players like that playing in your Midfield where are you going to get your creativity from in in in the in possession phase and the answer that they found to that problem was fullbacks so they brought in Trent Alexander Arnold they had Andy Robertson on the other side and they use those fullbacks as a way of getting high up the pitch and then creating chances for for um for Strikers from forwards same thing has happened for Newcastle they brought in trippier very early on and again they play very direct but how many times do you see trippier in these kind of areas actually fashioning chances I highest chance Creator I think over the last two seasons a lot of it’s from set pieces but like open player I think he’s one of the highest in the Premier League yeah yeah I mean Newcastle really like attacking on the right hand side half space through his little triangles with alaron Brun gim maras and tripier that’s kind of where he’s really proved his well weight in million I love the stuff they do in there cuz how many times do you see that particularly in when they’ve got settled possession again but these sorts of balls into the half space in the box where one of them runs in or you know isak can isak can run out um and they and then they generate these cut Backs from there I think they’re really good at those at those kind of things but again all focuses around fullback the fullbacks of the creative H so what we’ve got here is two teams are very similar in Liverpool under klopp very early on and Newcastle under Eddie how they’re teams that are trying to control the game predominantly out of possession even when they’re attacking there’s an outof possession element there that if they lose the ball they can win it back and generate chances from that as well okay so say’s taken great inspiration from that Liverpool side and that was a winning Liverpool side what’s the shortfall where’s the deficit in terms of just copying it yeah so Liverpool and Newcastle both encountered problems relying predominantly on out of possession to control games but for very different reasons let’s focus on Newcastle first because the problem that we’ve seen Newcastle develop in the last few months has been their press pressing has dropped off they’re less able to control out of possession and if you’re relying on out of possession to control the game and you lose the ability to do that suddenly you’re not controlling the game in any phase of play so this is a nice visz that John Müller one of our analysts has run up for me this is just showing the the intensity of new C’s press during Eddie how’s tenure and as you can see this season just been a massive drop off so you can see last season huge gains in terms of what they were doing in terms of intensity High pressing and now that’s dropping off that’s part of the reason why Newcastle are less good this season because they’re unable to control the game in the way that they want to so this is clearly a massive problem for Newcastle right now because they want to be controlling games in this way and Newcastle fans will be screaming at her as that is down to injury uh first and foremost right Jacob yeah let’s run through it at almost every phase of a team uh if you start in Midfield which is probably not a particularly logical place to start but here we yeah start in the middle I like exactly um we fan out like of Dan Ashworth does with his spokes influence um Newcastle have for long periods lacked jinton and Joe willick I think they’re really important because they’re both newcastle’s most athletic midfielders John was talking about that earlier but they’re also really technical especially Joe willik although jinton last season his uh success rate with passing while under pressure was actually one of the very best in the league which is a side of him which hasn’t necessarily been explored that well before so they’ve effectively been left with Midfield three of Bruno gimz of Lewis Miley who is technically very good but he’s 17 and doesn’t have the physical side yet and sha longstaff who while he’s physically very good technical play has never been one of his greatest strengths tanali should have been that player as well who was brought into marry some technical ability and this massive motor and because of gambling in Italy that has not been he’s not been at newcastle’s disposal in the front three there’s been more injuries you got Anthony Gordon who’s an absolute pressing machine but he has been asked to play every single game on the left one of Alexander isach or Callum Wilson is always injured very rotating and you’ve basically got Miguel Arron on the right similar story to Gordon the other thing which has been really important this season is the lack of is the loss of Nick pop so Nick popes his superpower he’s a good shot stopper but his superpower is his ability as a sweep keeper to choose when to come out of defense and Newcastle are a big team defensively not necessarily the quickest so they’ve had they’ve got uh Dan burn we’ve got Fabian sh who aren’t super speedy and they’ve got swen botman who’s been dealing with a knee injury for most of the season and so isn’t as quick as normal that means that teams have basically with popout been able to play over the top of Newcastle Deka can’t react to come out and sweep it away so Newcastle as a result have had to drop their defense slightly deeper they go into a passive stage even earlier and it opens up more space for an already depleted and tired Midfield to have to cover and that is why Dr minutes now as well CU they add on all the injury time I wonder if that’s relevant last season they had the ball in play the least amount of any team put it out for throwings and they recover so they can do those intense Sprints now and again by giving themselves a little bit of time quite sneaky and then got found out and then people started making noise about it but I wonder if the extra like eight or nine minutes the end of games might be relevant when you’re already knackered yeah and we need to talk about champions league as well because it changes the the tempo of of your training schedule as well so last season Newcastle will have spent most of their time working on a two game week Saturday Saturday with ch League a Tuesday or Wednesday game in there soon as you’re doing that then obviously you’re playing an extra game you also have much less time to to do some of the training as well and the thing which really speaks to that is newcastle’s record after International breaks so under Eddie how over the last two seasons I think there’s been eight or nine games they’ve won all of them but one the other one was a draw and their goal difference in that g in those games are roughly 25 goals to two so as soon as they’ve had a break they’re on it as soon as you get into to meat of it they’re starting to run into issues with the injuries but just to quickly bring this back to the board John have you seen evidence that Eddie how is the man who can bring on newcastle’s style of play evolve it has he shown you anything to suggest he’s got that versatility well let’s go back to the the Liverpool example because Liverpool I think faced a very different problem from relying on out of possession play um in their evolution under Jurgen klopp they didn’t necessarily have that that moment where they just dropped off because they weren’t able to play intensely anymore but what they did find is that even play Just focusing on the out possession as their form of controlling games wasn’t going to be enough for them to really challenge at the very top which is I think a problem that Newcastle would have hit into even if they didn’t drop off on the intensity side of things as well and the way that joggen klopp sold that was not necessarily by compromising on the out of possession intensity but by finding ways of of maybe tempering it by being able to control games in possession a little bit more so um we looked at this game Chelsea versus Liverpool in in 201819 and you can see here we’ve got um a almost the the backbone of their of their defense that would go on to win Champions Leagues and and and titles Etc um the season before so this is what we start seeing from Liverpool from 1718 to 1819 is the ability to actually to to pick and choose their moments we talked before about when you’re a team who controls game out of possession you can play direct football and win the ball back quickly with your counter press um but you’re relying on your counter press there if your counter press is off suddenly you end up in these games where you lose control very quickly so what Liverpool started doing was develop veloping ways of of controlling the ball in possession deciding the moments when they were going to play the ball forward and being able to actually eventually squeeze oppositions deeper and deeper um with with ball possession not having to get the ball quickly forward as much as possible but actually picking and choosing those moments and the big changes that we see here again comes back to what we were talking about with JJ is that they started raising the floor raising the ceiling so um this season they’ve got van djk and Allison in in the team the season before they had Min and they were playing claven and Len as their Defenders like this um they were much less able to play that controlled way because these two on the ball much less um accomplished than van dijk and Joe Gomez and Joel matp who who was the other defender in that being compared to Van djk yeah yeah which you know it’s it’s it’s an obvious point but what the what improving the quality of players in their back line allowed them to do was to be able to possess the ball at the back to then be able to um control the game in possession rather than just having to rely on the out possession if the out possession didn’t work you you’re sort of up up the creek um and so yeah this is the big question that we’re going to now throw towards Eddie how the question is can he start developing ways of controlling games in possession as well as out of possession and I think that the way that Liverpool did it was yes by bringing in better players so um Eddie how will will have the same sort of mitigating Factor there and you could argue yeah with better players he might be able to develop these sorts of ideas but the the the big question is can he evolve because Jurgen klopp I think did evolve he he recognized that he couldn’t play the way that he wanted to play at the beginning um later on if he wanted to challenge for titles or challenge for Champions Leagues and so he he he slightly modified his his way of playing can Eddie how do that and I think this is going to be the question that that newcastle’s owners have to ask is he the guy to to move them on tactically um give him a few seasons see if he can do it if not then they’ll they’ll bring someone else in no doubt to be able to start adding those in possession control elements is also is also the um the thing where man like other managers and analysts will work out what the other team is doing and you can then sus that out I think like lots of teams when Liverpool had momentum and the energy and intensity it was very hard to stop them even though you knew exactly what they were doing but when Newcastle started having the like loss of momentum with energy and intensity going with injuries and lack of coordination even in the pressing when you start having different players on there then suddenly you become more vulnerable and you can’t do the things you doing before so you’ve got to evolve anyway and uh that’s probably an issue that come I think there’s a really interesting split between Eddie how at Bournemouth and Eddie how at Newcastle at Bournemouth he was constantly changing system changing formation and I mean I think pretty much every year it was changing whereas Newcastle they’ve been wedded to this four through three for pretty much the last two seasons I think until they played five at the back couple of weeks ago uh they’d started four at the back and four through3 for 130 successive games it is very single-minded in his ideology so it’s effectively has his past been a way of tinkering for him to reach this kind of mtic ideal of football which he’s now always going to stick with or is this just the best thing to have right now and he’s going to move it on as he starts to progress Newcastle system I’m glad you mentioned the present because both of your parts I feel I feel like brings us to the same point this convergence here in that like what do Newcastle do next and what they do next is going to be hampered by off the pitch matters right we discussed PSR very briefly just wanted to ask you Jacob how Central qualifying for the Champions League or just European football full stop at this point is to their transformation into like title contenders and will they have to sell anyone this summer to combat those issues and move forward in the long term take that shortterm hit yeah there’s there’s multiple factors to it I think the most simple one to deal with is just purely attracting players it effectively gives you a a leg up in the transfer market if you can offer this to ambitious talented young players but the other side is from the PSR side the revenue side um under Mike Ashley Newcastle were basically a way to get cheap advertising the the sort of commercial deals which they had were rap were sort of massively undervalued to what they should be so this is a club who now has to grow their revenue more quickly more quickly more quickly the champions league is a massive part of that not just in the prize money sense but from the TV revenue from the sort of caliber of deals you can sign I think it’s no surprise that the Adidas deal was announced around the same time as their first Champions League match if you don’t have that and you take that half step back you start to worry about if other teams brand are going to start to overtake you you have Aston Villa potentially coming up for tracks you have Tottenham entrenching themselves as quite a long way ahead of Newcastle whereas I think Newcastle realistically for the next couple of Seasons would like to see Spurs as a model of the sort of financial World in which they could inhabit those of challenges they’re going to have to start to deal with and why in a way they’ve got an outside chance of reaching the conference League this season I do think that’s important to have some form of European football for them if not for a footballing side they might still be exhausted but just purely from the commercial side it’s interesting that JJ highlighted that qualifying for the Champions League ahead of time also exposes some chinks in their transfer armar because what you’re saying here is that it also exposes some of their infrastructure problems too and sort of their their ability to generate revenue and keep acting like a big club uh which also brings us to the fact they’re playing in Australia three days after the Premier League season finishes and uh that all their Premier League or their players sorry are going to be shattered quite so I sort of raised this with a senior figure at Club saying you’ve been dealing with all of these injuries everyone’s exhausted why are you traveling across the world for two games and they were making the point that it’s something they need to do commercially but also it’s a symbol of where they are as a club they were I think they used the word honored to be part of it because the alternative was if Newcastle had gone through the FA Cup and Chelsea had gone out to Leicester Chelsea would have been the club uh who were playing uh Tottenham in Melbourne and it kind of speaks that Newcastle see themselves as is now being in that company they see themselves as big clubs do postseason tours and in a way their belief is that they have a player Care Systems in place to mean that flying Halfway Around the World potentially two weeks before the Euros in Copper America is absolutely fine disagree on that but that is the reasoning behind that they see it as pretty much a necessity rather than a luxury at this point there Darren eels who talks a lot about well in the documentary he talks a lot about um cuz he grew Atlanta United in America from nothing literally nothing was first employee to being what they are now and he sees the his job at Newcastle as being very similar and that he’s trying to basically build a club from the very bottom up and uh one of the huge things is trying to make them a worldwide fan base not just a team localized in Newcastle it’s meant to be all around the entire world so he was going out to America to try and get supporters groups in Philadelphia and things like that try and get that going but I like how this example them having to act like a big Club also inconveniences them I feel like that’s quite emblematic for where they currently find themselves at it’s very dressed for the job you want yeah exactly so I just wanted to ask some final questions JJ just to bring this back to transfers like why will it take longer for them to build a squad than a title winning Squad than it did for the likes of city and Chelsea then just like snapshot overview points just the times we find ourselves in and the position like City are in for example it’s the times it’s the times that we’re in I well we know why they’ve got ffp regulation things they can’t spend that much money they got to sell players they’ve already got probably to fund any new ones that they want to um players are really expensive now uh recruitment around the world is really good so anyone who’s young and beide potential development is already they go to Benfica basically and then you just can’t get them you can’t bring them in can’t afford it so uh even like a cheap squad player like the equivalent of uh not Gareth Barry because he was good uh who’s an equivalent of like a squad player like I mean Harvey Barnes is a good example of a player who is good A bit potential can make your floor higher but they cost you £38 million rather than being 15 that maybe they should be saying like according to the PSR rules you can make 105 million pounds of losses over three seasons that’s 35 million a year of losses 38 million for Harvey Barnes is more than the losses you can make right so you’re going to have to recoup that in in Revenue in order to be able to even buy anyone else so that’s how that what’s happened is is that player value is inflated but the PSR regulations haven’t inflated either and so we’re getting to this point now where you’re just unable to buy as many players as as maybe you were in the past unless they can find a way of course there was some sort of money fueled League that would be able to afford to buy someone like Jacob Murphy for £ 89 million and it was ratified by everyone else thinking that was fair valuation that’s they can’t really do that because no one will let them have the fair valuation of it problematic so but the other ffp hack is to effectively sign a player of 10 million and make him into a 40 million pound player which is something which Eddie how has shown he does have a potential to do with players in the squad that is the flip side and to bring it back to a tactical perspect as well John is the Prem League just so much more developed than it was when Chelsea and Man City you know expedited their rise that it’s just going to take Newcastle so much longer to cultivate that winning identity now yeah in prepping for this I watched a lot of games from the mid 2010s um just to see what was going on I watched a few games between Liverpool and Man City and the it’s 10 years since that and the the quality of football since then has gone up you wouldn’t necessarily think it but it’s incredible how tactically developed the league has become I think Co had a role to play in that because I think there’s space and time for people at clubs to think about what they were doing from a tactical point of view and so what we’re getting to now is you know the teams at the very top are just so tactically Advanced talking like Arsenal this season just the very Cutting Edge of of of where football tactic tactics is at Man City have been at that level for you know ever since Pep Guardiola came in Yogen klopp has been in incredible that he’s come in and as we’ve said been able to uh evolve tactically so the the problem with teams trying to come through now both in terms of like the infrastructure and finances but also in terms of the the the Tactical side of things and that includes things like you know having the coaches who are able to coach high level the for example pressing that we’ve talked about here like pressing has come on incredibly far in the last five years you don’t that doesn’t happen overnight Arsenal are good at pressing now because they were you know they started putting things in place five years ago that allow them to be where they’re at now and that’s the problem with any club trying to come through they’re just at the back at the back of the race uh to get to get good and I think the thing that I’ve learned I think from the last few weeks because we talked about Manchester United last week the teams who succeeded the teams who are ruthless and they they’re constantly churning squads they’re constantly churning staff and they’re always thinking they’re not happy to accept just Plateau at any level um and I think that’s what we’re going to see from both Newcastle and Manchester United do they stick with their managers or do they take the brave decision no we we think there’s a coach out there who can raise us to the next level do we move the the manager on and and and bring that that that manager in to actually raise our level and those are the the clubs that have done that we’ve seen from Manchester City I think is that at every level it’s like what’s the next level what’s the next level we’re never happy to just rest on our Laurels capitalism well you’ve all given really nice nuanced answers so I’m going to ask you to be really reductive at the end of the episode here can you win a league title coming from mid-table or the lower end of the Premier League with all that cash in 10 years now or is that just impossible I think it’s possible I think Arsenal could do it right Arsenal have have made that transition really in The Last 5 Years um so I definitely think it is possible but I think in terms of actually doing it you have to get everything right at every moment and everything has to fall into place and you have to have the the sort of Revenue that a club like Arsenal have um so yeah possible very difficult make it more specifically Newcastle then I think Newcastle have the ability to because they know they will be back through the transfer market it’s important they grow their revenue before the PSR rules change in a couple of years time to being a squad cost ratio which could perhaps be even more restrictive on the amount the non- elite clubs are able to spend against to that Dam line part two there may be e profit from some fortunate timing I mean Jurgen klopp is already leaving Liverpool at the end of the season pep guardiola’s contract expires at the end of next year we don’t know if he’s going to sign another one there may be a natural kind of Shifting of the order which they are able to exploit but that means that next season has to be a massively transformation War for them JJ yes love there we have it two NOS one yes but roughly a decade if you like this video please consider subscribing to the channel the 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