When Eddie Howe warned of ‘short-term pain’ on Friday, he never imagined it would be quite so immediate and quite so excruciating. What this weekend highlighted, in fact, are the dangers to the long-term health of Newcastle United.
Aston Villa, famously, once won a title by using just 14 players. Newcastle will not do the same 44 years on. Talk of winning the Premier League expired the moment Bournemouth smashed a deserved fourth on a day when, in Howe’s words, his team were ‘off it in every area’.
That is what happens when a group of around a dozen players win nine games on the bounce. There comes a day when they bounce no more. Saturday was that day, be it because of fatigue or, perhaps even more so, a complacency that arises from a lack of real competition for places.
Twenty-four hours earlier, Howe had revealed that, because of PSR, there would likely be no new signings in January, despite expected departures. That was what he meant by short-term pain, a squad whose talent pool – in some key positions especially – runs shallow beyond those he picks every week.
And Howe, by his own admission, does pick the same players every week when his team is winning. Effective rotation is the next step in Newcastle’s evolution.
But to do that a head coach needs better options on the carousel. The expected loss of Miguel Almiron to Atlanta United is not a big loss at all when considering his recent form. It is the failure to replace him with better – either through choice or inability – that will hinder Newcastle in the short term, as Howe spoke about.
Newcastle’s 4-1 thrashing by Bournemouth after a nine-game winning streak exposed a problem for Eddie Howe
Beyond the confines of the core stars, Newcastle’s squad is threadbare and risks exhaustion
By summer they will have gone two full years without signing a first XI star unless they recruit this January
Saturday shone a light on that. Barring Sandro Tonali, this was a group who looked mentally and physically shot at the end of a club-record equalling run of victories. It was a game too far, especially against opposition set up to exploit any hint of weakness.
What Bournemouth found was less of a hint and more an open invitation. From the off it was clear that Newcastle were there for the taking, and Bournemouth duly took them to the cleaners, butchers and bakers. Justin Kluivert scored a brilliant hat-trick and it was he who looked the £150million forward, not Newcastle’s Alexander Isak.
That is not a criticism of Isak or, by extension, any of Newcastle’s players. But they need help and, if they’re not getting it this month, the hierarchy best be formulating a plan for significant investment down the line. This summer marks two years since they last bought a first-team player.
Their recent success has shown the potential that resides, but their most recent match shows why it is all so fragile. That was another word Howe used last week. Even with all of their star men fit and available, players can only go so hard and so fast for so long.
But what Howe really meant by ‘fragile’ was the probable impact on results were they to lose to injury one of Isak, Tonali, Bruno Guimaraes or Anthony Gordon. It is with good reason that Newcastle have only won once without Guimaraes in his three years at the club. It is with good reason that, during three games without Isak earlier this season, they failed to score a goal from open play.
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It is a high-intensity, high-wire act that Howe and his players perform, but there is no safety net. They have a team, not a squad. And, because of that, they played tired at the weekend. Their nine wins came in a 32-day period. They will play five times in the next 32 days.
And Newcastle will come again. In a few weeks’ time this defeat could well be looked at in isolation. But it should not be forgotten. It should not be written off as an anomaly. It was, rather, informative. It told those above Howe that the playing staff need and deserve reinforcement. Fail to do that and something special is at risk of going to waste.
They would do well to look at their weekend tormentors, too, when it comes to identifying potential targets. For all of the above reflection on Newcastle, Andoni Iraola’s side were exceptional. Antoine Semenyo, 25, is a winger who would improve most top sides, and he certainly would Newcastle. Left-back Milos Kerkez, 21, is headed for the very top, while centre-backs Illya Zabarnyi, 22, and Dean Huijsen, 19, pocketed the most talked about striker in world football.
So yes, for Newcastle, this was extremely painful. But from such episodes lessons should be learnt. It is on sporting director Paul Mitchell, with the collaboration of Howe and the backing of the owners, to find those long-term remedies.
