Four games into a season is too early for grand conclusions, but sometimes a heavy defeat exposes problems that better results have allowed us to overlook. Newcastle’s 4 to 1 defeat at Leeds felt like that kind of occasion.
Injuries and an inexperienced midfield help explain the performance, but the warning signs were already there against Liverpool, beneath the win at Tottenham and, perhaps most clearly, in the home draw with Bournemouth.
That last point is worth being upfront about. A few weeks ago,
after three games, I flagged the same underlying pattern: Newcastle allowing far more shots than they were producing themselves, kept afloat by finishing that was never going to last. Leeds is not a new problem revealing itself. It is that same problem, now without the finishing to paper over it.
It is also worth remembering that this is the Premier League. There are very few fixtures you can approach expecting a comfortable win, and clubs outside the usual big names are perfectly capable of handing out a beating. Chelsea’s expensively assembled squad found that out on Friday night whenBrentford took them apart. Newcastle losing at Leeds is not, in itself, evidence that everything is falling apart. The concern is how the performance fits a pattern that was already becoming apparent.
Then there is the upheaval within Newcastle’s own squad. Bruno Guimarães and Sandro Tonali have gone from midfield, Alexander Isak and Anthony Gordon have gone from the attack, and Kieran Trippier has moved on. Joelinton, the remaining member of what was probably Newcastle’s strongest midfield, has barely been available. That is an enormous amount of quality and experience to lose, along with the understanding those players had developed together.
Their replacements deserve time. Nico González has only just arrived, Lewis Miley is 20, and Sean Steur is 18. Add a new manager who arrived shortly before the season began, and some disruption was inevitable. But Newcastle have lost more than a collection of good footballers. They have lost several of the qualities that allowed the team to play the way it did, and it is not yet clear how they intend to replace them.
There is also a physical side to this worth being honest about. Whatever anyone made of Tonali and Gordon’s end product last season, both were already proven physically at the very top level, and Bruno and Joelinton were exactly the same and able to cope with what English football demands week to week. The Premier League is arguably the most physically punishing league anywhere in the world, not just the most watched, and it does not go easy on players still building up to that level. It is one thing to have the technical quality to succeed here. It is another to have the conditioning and the know-how to survive ninety minutes of it, then do it again three days later, and Newcastle’s younger arrivals are still working that out on top of everything else Jaissle is asking of them.
The numbers give some indication of the problem. In2024/25, Newcastle generated around 1.75 expected goals per Premier League game. Through theopening four matches this season, that has fallen to around 1.00, while expected goals conceded has risen from roughly 1.24 to 1.86. Shots have dropped from around 13.8 per match to 9.8, and touches in the opposition penalty area have fallen from just over 30 to fewer than 19, a drop of around 38 per cent.
It is worth treating those swings with some caution. Four games is a small enough sample that a couple of unlucky moments or one especially difficult fixture can move a number like expected goals conceded a long way, and some regression back towards last season’s figures should probably be expected regardless of what Newcastle actually do differently. Even so, three separate measures, shots, penalty area touches and expected goals both ways, are all pointing in the same direction, which makes coincidence a harder explanation to reach for than it would be with any single number in isolation.
Four fixtures cannot provide a fair verdict against an entire season, and the opposition matters. Even allowing for that, those figures fit what we have been watching. Newcastle are getting into dangerous areas less often while allowing opponents to threaten them more frequently. This goes beyond whether somebody takes a chance when it comes along.
Pass completion, meanwhile, has barely changed, from83.6 per cent in 2024/25 to82.2 per cent this season. That does not tell us how ambitious or useful those passes are, but it does suggest that simply keeping the ball is not the answer. Newcastle need to do more with it, particularly in those moments when the opposition are vulnerable.
For me, the best Newcastle performances under Eddie Howe were often built around those moments. They could dominate games, although I never really thought of them as a possession side. Their greatest threat was the speed with which they could win the ball and turn it into an attack. Bruno could receive under pressure and play forward, Tonali brought physical presence, running power and defensive coverage, and Joelinton could win a physical battle and turn a loose ball into another Newcastle attack. None of that happens without players who can hold their own physically first.
Ahead of them, Gordon stretched teams from wide and Isak threatened the space through the middle, while Trippier provided another reliable way forward from deeper positions. Those qualities complemented each other. There was somebody to win the ball, somebody to move it and somebody to run onto it, with enough strength behind the attack to compete again if it broke down.
That is not to pretend they were all brilliant every week, or that Tonali and Gordon’s league contributions last season were beyond criticism. But whatever their individual form, they understood how to play this way and had the Premier League nous to know when to push forward, when to hold their position and how to help each other out. Newcastle’s younger replacements are being asked to learn those things while also settling into a new team. It is a lot to ask all at once.
There has been plenty of talk about Matthias Jaissle bringing vertical football to Newcastle. To me, the emphasis on getting forward quickly sounds familiar, even if the details of his system are different. The difficulty is that he is trying to make it work without several of the players who made Newcastle so dangerous in those situations.
Bournemouth offered a useful illustration of what is missing. Newcastle hadalmost 58 per cent possession, yet were outshot 17 to eight and allowed Bournemouth more touches in their penalty area. At Leeds, Newcastle completed119 passes in the final third to the hosts’ 94, but Leeds had 30 penalty area touches to Newcastle’s 18 and took 15 shots to seven. Newcastle could get the ball forward. Turning that territory into danger was another matter, and when attacks broke down they were too easy to attack themselves.
Which, unfortunately, brings us back to Alexander Isak but he is relevant here whether we like it or not. Newcastle have still not replaced the combination of qualities he gave them. He could run beyond defenders, receive into feet, carry the ball and create something himself. His goals were only part of the problem his departure left behind.
Woltemade did not work out and is now on loan, while Wissa has looked better this season without solving the wider attacking problem. This is where Will Osula could have a useful role. Nobody is suggesting he is another Isak, but his pace and willingness to chase the space behind defenders give Newcastle an option worth using. He is a bit of a disruptor, and at the moment we could probably use some on-field disruption up front right now.
A run does not have to end with the runner receiving the ball to be useful. Making defenders turn towards their own goal, or hesitate before stepping forward, can give the midfield more room to play. Osula will need service and support, but Newcastle should be looking for ways to make those qualities help the team.
There are reasons to expect improvement in midfield too. González needs time to settle, while Joelinton’s return should restore some of the physical presence Newcastle have been missing. Unfortunately, González’s concussion at Leeds has interrupted that process, and Joelinton is still working his way back. Jaissle needs a way through the next few games as well as an idea of how he wants the finished team to play.
That may mean more protection in midfield and fewer players committing beyond the ball at once. It would be misleading to pin all of Newcastle’s problems on shape, though. Leeds’s third goal was not really a case of bodies out of position; it was Calvert-Lewin simply bulldozing past Sven Botman in a straight physical duel before finishing under Hornicek, exactly the sort of individual battle Newcastle used to win as a matter of course with Tonali, Bruno and Joelinton in the side, and no amount of tactical caution solves that kind of moment by itself. Jaissle more or less admitted as much afterwards, saying Newcastle “couldn’t match that physicality” in the first half. Some of this is about shape and discipline. Some of it is simply about winning individual battles, which is one more reason Joelinton’s return matters as much as anything Jaissle can coach onto the training pitch.
Playing forward quickly does not require everybody to rush forward together. Nor will simply pressing harder solve everything. Howe’s strongest side could afford to be aggressive partly because it had players capable of recovering the situation when the first press failed. This team has yet to show that same capacity.
The departures help explain the problem, but adapting to the players available is now Jaissle’s responsibility. Newcastle cannot recreate the old side, and there is little point endlessly looking backwards. They can, however, rebuild the things it did well: winning possession, moving forward with purpose, stretching defenders and being ready to compete when an attack breaks down. Those were the things that made Newcastle dangerous.
Until they find a way to do them again, more possession and better passing figures will offer fairly little comfort
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