Newcastle United lost 4-1 at Coventry in Monday night.
Matthias Jaissle and his players also losing out on the opportunity to be in the Premier League top four after six rounds of matches.
What exactly it counts for if ending up fourth in the table at this early stage is open to debate, though for sure it would have given a warm glow whenever you looked at the Premier League table ahead of the Aston Villa match on Saturday.
It obviously isn’t in dispute that the final scoreline read Coventry City 4 Newcastle United 1.
How we got to that final scorline is though. In dispute that is. What I witnessed compared to what many other Newcastle United fans appear to have seen.
We are all gutted about the result but when I hear some fans going on about “humiliation” and “worst ever”, that wasn’t my take on it.
It was the strangest of football matches and I still don’t understand how Newcastle United found a way to lose, never mind end up with a 4-1 scoreline.
What I saw was Newcastle United players players guilty of some bad decisions and making mistakes. When you are guilty of that, it often feels almost inevitable that then that will be compounded with bad luck and fine margins going against you as well.
Matthias Jaissle had 23 days to think about what he was going to do for the next match after a 2-1 win over Hull City, he has his game plan, his tactics, formation and team selection, then within four minutes Lukas Hornicek blows all of those preparations apart when making a quickfire double blunder that gifts Coventry a spot-kick and the lead. Best laid plans and all that…
Throughout the first half it looked inevitable that Newcastle United were going to equalise and yet somehow found ingenious ways not to do so.
Out for the second half and even quicker than the first half, a shocker of a mistake led to Coventry’s second goal.
A really bad reckless challenge on Joe Willock somehow saw Coventry given the ball by the referee on the restart and the Newcastle player forced off the pitch for a minute, due to needing treatment for the bad challenge. I thought it was a clear foul and the Coventry player should have been booked. Somehow the referee made a shocker of a mistake this time and when United were down to ten men, Coventry got that huge second goal. Instead of Joe Willock getting the obvious free-kick and the Coventry player a yellow card, Newcastle with ten men on the pitch had seen the deficit doubled.
For the next half hour it was an even more dominant Newcastle United than the final half hour of the opening 45. It wasn’t a case of playing that well, Coventry just looked increasingly fatigued and dropped deeper due to Newcastle playing the ball around them and time after time creating goalscoring chances and great situations. Often the attacks were at little more than walking pace and yet bizarrely Newcastle managed to play through the home team time after time AND fail to punish them.
Then with 20 minutes to go, Sven Botman strolls up to the edge of the penalty area with no pressing of the ball whatsoever and then puts a rocket into the top corner from 20 yards or so.
At that point I didn’t think there was any chance this would now end in defeat and indeed every likelihood that Newcastle United would still end up winning. Coventry just looked like a side waiting to concede and throw away their advantage, an open door to be pushed open. The ten minutes after we scored it just looked inevitable a second would quickly follow, as it happened it took 11 minutes for the next goal. Lewis Hall gifted possession, Joelinton won the ball back but then gifted possession in an even worse position, next thing it is Coventry 3-1 and game over as Simms’ shot takes a cruel deflection and no chance for Hornicek. As I said earlier, if you make mistakes and create your own problems then it so often happens that luck and small margins also go against you. The game was now lost and almost inevitably, another long range effort ends up in the United net, this time very well struck and not needing a deflection.
I still don’t know how Newcastle United found a way to not win this match, never mind losing 4-1.
Newcastle didn’t play well but were by far the better team when it came to creating chances in the attacking third, the problem was that they were shocking when it came to converting them into goals and then (including with the referee for the second goal) created their own problems at the back that gifted the first three goals. Honesty has been thrown out the window for anybody claiming Coventry were the better and more dominant team throughout the vast majority of this match. The nine minutes after they went 3-1 up they certainly were as United were rocked by the fact that somehow they had managed to lose the game by that point.
Newcastle United compared to Coventry had more possession (67% v 33%), more shots (19 v 9), more corners (6 v 2) and more touches of the ball in the opposition penalty area (39 v 16). The only stat where Coventry had parity was shots on target, they managed six on target out of nine and hit the post with one of the other three, Newcastle with only six of nineteen on target. That was the story of this match.
As I said, I don’t think Newcastle United played particularly well in their general play but it was still more than good enough to dominate most of the match and outplay Coventry. If the United players had converted even a small proportion of the numerous clear chances they created then NUFC would have won comfortably. The key costly mistakes at the back were really poor but the players are only human. Just look at the Coventry keeper dropping a simple cross and letting it fall behind him a couple of yards from the goal but carried the luck it didn’t end up a goal.
The Newcastle United team do need to play better than this and the focus and concentration of players has to be far sharper, whether that is cutting out blunders at the back or finishing and decision making at the other end of the pitch.
There was a lot to like about the first hour or so of the win over Hull City, at both ends of the pitch, until tiredness/cramp set in and options were so limited on the bench.
Get back to those kind of levels and Newcastle United can give Aston Villa and our other upcoming opponents a tough game. The 4-1 at Coventry wasn’t a case of getting outplayed by a far better team, more a case of Newcastle United creating their own problems and falling short in key moments at both ends of the pitch.