Out of Europe and falling down the Premier League, Newcastle United's season is in serious danger of falling apart. But as they continue to grow as a football club in the long term, Manchester City's Kalvin Phillips could offer them some solutions in the short term.
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00:00 First things first, they're tired. Now if you're any Castle fans, don't close the video, I know you're so sick of hearing the words
00:07 "They are tired" shouldn't really excuse the level of performances, but it's worth pointing out that tiredness and a lack of energy
00:14 impacts Newcastle United in a way it wouldn't normally impact another team. Newcastle are one of very few teams who have their most
00:22 important creative player this deep in the side. Bruno Gimaraes,
00:27 everything goes through him whether it's from the back or whether it's in the final third and he plays as the deep six. And in
00:33 practice what that means is that when he pushes up into the attacking part of the pitch it forces all the other
00:38 midfield and wide players to go up with him. The right-sided attacker usually Almaron will go into the middle somewhere,
00:45 they get the width from Kieran Trippier and even when they do have sustained spells of possession here, Dan Byrne,
00:50 I can't reach him, he'll go and join in there as well. And what Newcastle try and do in the final third is they'll get
00:55 some sort of interplay between these three players in the wide areas, the centre forward will stay nice and central and Bruno will kind of
01:01 float from left to right as and where he feels he needs to be. Now this leaves them
01:06 incredibly open because your number six here should really be
01:09 watching this space in case the ball gets turned over. If they lose it,
01:12 they have to be the one who wins that back, stops counter-attacks happening in the centre of the pitch.
01:17 But that's not Bruno's game and it's not Bruno's job, but it's not what he's supposed to do.
01:21 He's supposed to float and get involved and it's usually one of the other eights, long staff,
01:26 who's supposed to kind of like watch that and cover over when he needs to. But that is an incredibly risky way to play your football
01:33 because the person in the position where you're supposed to have all the defensive sense is told not to have any defensive sense and you're
01:40 relying on someone else just happening to be there when they're not doing this other job.
01:45 But the reason this worked last season was because if you heard Eddie Howe talk about
01:49 intensity is our identity, he wasn't talking about like getting it up them and winning the ball back high.
01:54 He was talking about their ability to make recovery runs when they lose the ball. When this sort of thing did break down for Newcastle,
02:01 rather than them just getting constantly flooded on the counter-attack every single week, all their three midfielders and their wide attackers would
02:08 break their necks to get back in. The thing is, it's really, really hard to play this way
02:14 and if you're not 100%, if you're feeling a little bit tired, if you're nursing a small injury
02:18 or you're just coming back from one, it's almost impossible to do that for 90 minutes.
02:22 So having one or two injuries in the squad is fine, but when you've had like 14 players
02:26 constantly coming in and out, nobody really being back at their levels because of the
02:31 intensity of the games and the frequency of the fixtures, this whole system has just collapsed.
02:36 Thank you for watching this and you are a Newcastle United fan, you remember Chris Wood,
02:40 you know exactly how fast he can run. Last season,
02:43 three or four players would have stopped those counter-attacks before they even got to the halfway line, but this season,
02:48 they just physically couldn't do it, they couldn't keep up. Now,
02:52 I will say that tiredness is the big issue and once that stops being an issue,
02:56 you'll stop seeing as many of these issues. This whole
02:58 absurd attacking situation here is part of the growing pains Newcastle United are experiencing.
03:05 You see, the thing is, right, most quote-unquote "big teams", which Newcastle obviously aspire to be,
03:10 don't play like this with their most creative player in their deepest midfield role.
03:15 And that's because either if you do play like this, you end up massively over-committing, leaving yourself very vulnerable
03:20 to counter-attacks, or if you do what Newcastle do sometimes do, and that's sort of leave Dan Byrne back
03:25 and then they shuffle across into a three, you can see here, you become massively imbalanced on that side,
03:30 you're a player short. And this isn't me saying that the problem is Bruno, by the way, playing Bruno
03:36 exactly like this is what got them into the top four in the first place. The problem is
03:40 every other team in the Premier League. Last season, especially in the first half of it,
03:45 most teams didn't really take Newcastle seriously as one of the best sides in the league.
03:50 They certainly thought they were going to have improved off last season with the money they'd spent,
03:53 but they were still turning up at St. James's Park and thinking, "Yeah, we could play these."
03:57 And then, as I'm sure you remember, it turned out Newcastle were absolutely f***ing mint.
04:01 And then all of a sudden, teams turned up at St. James's Park and stopped trying to play them.
04:06 In fact, you'll no doubt remember a succession of incredibly frustrating home draws,
04:10 where teams just basically turned up trying to strangle a point out of the match,
04:14 and questions were being asked about how Newcastle were going to adapt.
04:17 At the time, they wanted to press the opposition really high and win the ball back up here,
04:21 but the opposition weren't having the ball back here. They weren't allowing that to happen.
04:25 So Newcastle had to become one of these possession teams.
04:28 That's why if you look at their average possession this season, which is like slightly over 55%,
04:33 and their average possession last season, which is pretty much bang on 50%,
04:37 you can see they're having to have a lot more of the ball, because teams are a lot more defensive against them.
04:42 And while you might be sitting there thinking, "5%? Is that really that much?"
04:45 Well, on the one hand, it does take you from being in the sort of the same bracket as like your Fulhams and your Wolves,
04:51 to being in the same sort of bracket as your Chelseas and your Tottenham. So there is a difference.
04:55 But if instead of looking at this as two whole seasons, we look at it as three groups of half a season,
05:00 you can see Newcastle spent the first half of last season seeing considerably less of the ball.
05:05 And now they're seeing even more of it again, as fewer and fewer teams try to play an open attacking game,
05:10 and instead look to sit back and hit Newcastle on the counter when they over-commit players forward.
05:17 And that is why, as was brilliantly pointed out by @editkev on Twitter this week,
05:21 that Newcastle have conceded more chances from counter-attacks than any other team in the Premier League.
05:28 And this video is about Calvin Phillips at some point, I absolutely promise,
05:31 but the brutal reality of what Newcastle are going through right now is they're forced to over-commit
05:36 this many players forward because they still haven't got the quality throughout the side in attacking areas
05:43 of the teams they're supposed to be competing with.
05:45 It really didn't look like it last season because of that intensity.
05:49 When they did lose the ball, they were winning it back so easily,
05:51 they looked like they were dominating these games, but it was still this high-risk system.
05:56 It's just that the thing that saves that high-risk system is the running, is the intensity,
06:01 is the determination to win the ball back.
06:03 And why the tiredness matters so much is because it's robbed them of that.
06:08 And what that leaves you with is a team for whom playing this way is borderline suicidal.
06:14 So yes, anyway, sorry, Calvin Phillips, that's why you clicked on this video, right?
06:18 Would he solve these problems for Newcastle United?
06:21 Well, short answer, yes, with an if.
06:25 Long answer, no, with a but.
06:27 Fundamentally, Calvin Phillips is unlike any other player Newcastle United currently have.
06:32 They've got a number of players who are good in the tackle, like we discussed already.
06:35 They will work back when they're able to and stop things happening that way,
06:39 but they haven't got anyone in that midfield who's got that kind of defensive radar brain,
06:44 who'll stop things happening before they become a problem,
06:46 who patrol areas before the opposition get into it.
06:48 And again, while they're a team that moves the ball around really well,
06:51 you wouldn't say there's like an expert long passer anywhere in that midfield.
06:55 Like, Longstaff hits the flanks very well, Bruno's got an excellent switch of play in his locker,
07:00 but when was the last time you saw either of those players sort of get in a really deep area
07:05 and create a chance from it?
07:06 And finally, and most obviously, there is nobody in that midfield
07:09 who will either just sit in front of the back four or even be able to drop and make it a three.
07:14 Calvin Phillips is, massive big asterisk behind me,
07:18 probably the outstanding player in the Premier League at combining all three of those attributes.
07:23 In terms of his long passing, he's miles ahead of anyone in that squad, including Bruno.
07:27 And defensively, whether it's positionally or physically in the tackle,
07:31 he brings a level of steeliness and understanding that Newcastle are completely lacking right now.
07:36 But I think the reason why in particular they're interested in Phillips
07:39 is there are a number of defensive midfielders with similar kind of profiles
07:42 who could go and do that for Newcastle.
07:45 But Phillips has something else in his locker, which I think makes him really important to them.
07:49 And that is, as anybody who watched him at Leeds United or remembers him in the Euros for England
07:53 that time will tell you, he's actually really good as a box-to-box midfielder as well.
07:58 Like, just to show you his sort of like, danger numbers, whatever you want to call them.
08:02 These won't look particularly impressive,
08:03 but that's when compared to all the midfielders in the Premier League.
08:06 Like, if you just compared him to other number sixes, to other defensive midfielders,
08:11 he is light years ahead of the rest of them.
08:13 Which means, crucially for Newcastle, you would then have an option.
08:16 Like, in certain game situations, you could have Phillips sitting in front of the back four
08:20 and you could push Bruno into the number eight.
08:21 But Newcastle really, really do like to have Bruno receive the ball in that sixth position
08:27 to do all the build-up.
08:29 And you would still be able to do that.
08:31 You'd be able to swap them seamlessly.
08:33 Phillips would be more than happy to make that sort of late Sean Longstaff run into the box
08:37 to play with Trippier and Almiron on this side to create chances.
08:40 But were the threat of a counter-attack too big because you pushed up so high,
08:44 you can just swap them round and Phillips will just patrol this sort of area.
08:48 They'll not be going through him for all their chance creation.
08:51 So he's free to sort of make them less open.
08:55 And what that would mean by extension is when you're wide attack
08:57 is they can both get in to play with the centre forward.
09:00 You'll still get that width from Trippier.
09:02 It means you don't need to have someone like Dan Byrne on the side
09:05 who can adapt to be in the back three.
09:07 You can just have a full back whose job is to get up and support.
09:11 And then when everybody's pushed up,
09:12 because this is just who Newcastle have to be now,
09:14 they're going to see so much of the ball,
09:16 all of a sudden your central area is not a glaring weak spot.
09:20 It's a massive strength.
09:21 Now, I would love to say that's the end,
09:23 but you may recall this enormous asterisk from just a few moments ago.
09:27 All of those Calvin Phillips numbers you've just seen are from the 2020/2021 season.
09:34 They are two and a half years old.
09:36 Now, there are two ways of looking at that, right?
09:39 Either A, the last time he had a full season in a team
09:41 where he was trusted and he was playing every week,
09:44 he was brilliant.
09:45 Or he hasn't done any of that for two and a half seasons
09:50 and there's absolutely zero guarantee he'd be able to do it now.
09:54 So glass half full or glass half full,
09:58 but of some kind of runny boxing dish.
10:00 So just to try and wrap this all up in a nice package for you,
10:04 Newcastle's current problems, they will get better
10:08 because when the onus is on them to play this sort of possession football,
10:11 when the fixture list lightens and they get players back from injury,
10:14 they'll be able to re-add the intensity required to stop them being so open.
10:18 So that's good.
10:19 But on the other hand, as they continue to develop as a club
10:22 and fewer and fewer teams give them any space to play in,
10:25 the onus is going to be on them to play this way more and more and more.
10:29 So perversely, a disaster, the like of which they had against Nottingham Forest,
10:34 will happen a lot less.
10:36 But at the same time, the probability of it happening will go up.
10:41 Unless, of course, they were to add the 2021 version of Calvin Phillips
10:46 or somebody like him, like the 2023 version of Calvin Phillips, maybe,
10:51 into this squad.
10:52 You can have all the money and all the good attacking players in the world.
10:55 You still need a Rodri.
10:57 You still need a Declan Rice.
10:58 You still need, let's go back in time, Fabinho.
11:01 You still need a Casemiro, the Real Madrid's Casemiro.
11:05 And I know Eddie Howe has already done a thing today where he's been like,
11:07 "Oh, well, it's FFP, so I don't really know if we're interested in Calvin Phillips."
11:10 And I wouldn't really say number six is a priority.
11:13 If you are a Newcastle fan that still believes a single word
11:16 that comes out of the club's mouth during a transfer window,
11:19 I have some magic beans you may also be interested in.
11:22 Trust me, they have spoken to Calvin Phillips and they have spoken to Manchester City.
11:27 And that does not necessarily mean the deal is going to happen.
11:30 It just means that they wanted to, for reasons.
11:34 Anyway, I hope you had a nice Christmas.
11:35 And depending on when you watch this video, I also hope you have a happy New Year.
11:38 4/4/2 in 2024 is going to be some fun thing.
11:44 You may have noticed we've recently sort of changed filming areas.
11:46 This is going to get bigger and better and more exciting,
11:48 and I cannot wait to show you all.
11:50 But for now, I'm going to take my first two days off of the festive season.
11:53 And then it's my birthday the week after that.
11:55 So God knows what's going to happen.
11:57 But until then, yeah, up the lads, away the mags, and I'll see you soon.
12:03 Goodbye.