‘How sh*t must Newcastle be’? Even Eddie Howe agrees that was their ‘worst’ performance yet
When Eddie Howe called it the “worst” performance of his Newcastle tenure, you believed him. Few coaches emit quite the same energy of someone who has almost certainly memorised all 188 games he has managed at one club in four years.
Newcastle conceded five goals in defeats to both Spurs and Manchester City early in his reign. They lost four Premier League games in a row almost two years ago, starting with a defeat to Luton. They were once knocked out of the FA Cup by Cambridge; Bournemouth and Aston Villa both thrashed them last season.
But this was stark. It was losing away at West Ham bad. It was several shades of half-time triple substitution terrible. It was Sandro Tonali at right-back diabolical.
As the taunts from a mildly disbelieving London Stadium said, “how shit must you be”, West Ham were winning at home.
The answer Howe stopped barely short of giving was ‘very’. He said he “almost could have taken anyone off” at the break as “it didn’t look like a Newcastle team” which summarily failed to build on an early lead and gradually capitulated.
Perhaps that shouldn’t be so surprising. Newcastle continue to wrestle with an inconsistency which underpins their league form: LWLWLDWDLD. Since ending last season with a couple of defeats which ought to have crushed their Champions League qualification hopes, Howe’s side have not recorded consecutive Premier League results of any kind.
Some of that is an inevitable by-product of a difficult summer. There is certainly a case to argue that Newcastle emerged from those chastening months for the better in terms of their squad composition but so much churn has left Howe scrambling to solve myriad problems.
The constant need to balance and switch focus between competitions could be a factor too, as it was a couple of seasons ago when Newcastle struggled with the advent of Champions League football in their calendar.
But their away form is the obvious worry. Eight months after Bruno Guimaraes sealed their penultimate Premier League win on the road, Newcastle individually and collectively crumbled in the same stadium, one in which West Ham had not won in the league since February.
Howe last managed a Premier League away win in April against Leicester. Since that day Newcastle have picked up four points on their travels in eight games, a marginally better record than promoted Burnley and Leeds (both three) in five matches.
“You don’t want to become home-dominant,” Howe himself said earlier this year, having recently conquered the City Ground, Old Trafford and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. “You don’t want to be able to just perform in front of the Newcastle supporters.”
He added that “your away form is always based on character, on resilience, on your ability to defend first”. Those fundamentals had seemed shaky for some time but were entirely abandoned for the first time at the weekend. Newcastle must rediscover them if this season is going to represent another step in the right direction.
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