A better measure of success for this Newcastle United season

Written on Wednesday, 01 April 2026
Michael McRae

Having read the many articles about this Newcastle United season and what we should and shouldn’t do with Eddie Howe, I felt that our success has been diluted a little by the fact that it has been spread over several competitions.

Doing pretty well in several competitions isn’t as good as winning one…but it should count for something.

So I embarked on an interesting experiment this week with my friend Claude (since Chat Gpt has fallen out of favour) to establish a better measure of success than Premier League position.

The starting premise is, if you take every competition that each Premier League team has been a part of this season and apply points based on how many teams they have bettered in that competition, you can have a much more accurate picture of their overall success this season.

The Scoring Logic

PL Points: Total teams in competition- (Current Position)
Cup Points (FA and EFL): Total PL teams in competition – (Number of PL teams remaining/progressing further)
Euro Points (CL/EL/ECL): Total teams in competition- (Number of teams remaining/progressing further).
(Note: Newcastle United is ranked above the other Round of 16 exits (Man City, Chelsea, Spurs) due to first leg draw.

The results

PL Efficiency Leaderboard – March 31, 2026
RankClubPLEuroEFL CupFA CupTotal
1Arsenal1928*1812*77
2Man City18251912*74
3Chelsea14261612*68
4Aston Villa1628*91063
5Newcastle82716960
6Liverpool1528*012*55
7Crystal Palace628*912*55
8Nott’m Forest428*91152
9Tottenham3269543
10Man Utd170912*38
11Fulham1109929
12Sunderland909927
13Everton1209526
14Brighton1009524
15Brentford1307121
16West Ham20312*17
17Leeds50012*17
18Bournemouth709016
19Burnley10056
20Wolves00055

You will see that with this measure, Newcastle United have had a pretty decent season despite injuries, transfer debacles and misfiring strikers.

I should note however that this is a snapshot of the current state. Starred teams are still in ongoing competitions and can accrue further points. That said, it’s unlikely that more than two or three will.

Let me know your thoughts.

Does this change the way you see this Newcastle United season.

Should we keep Eddie Howe after all, and most importantly, are my figures correct?

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