If Newcastle had held on to beat Crystal Palace on Saturday, it would have been, statistically, the most undeserved win in recent Premier League history.
Eddie Howe’s side had just one shot all game, which was blocked, producing an expected goals (xG) figure of 0.04 — yet with 90 seconds left, they were leading 1-0 thanks to Marc Guehi’s 53rd-minute own goal.
Since the 2010-11 Premier League season, the lowest xG ever recorded by a winning side was Watford’s 0.12 in a 1-0 defeat of a similarly ineffectual Middlesbrough in October 2016 (all the games below finished 1-0, with the exception of Leeds vs Manchester City and Brighton & Hove Albion vs Crystal Palace, which ended 2-1).
Newcastle’s case at Selhurst Park was even more egregious — they recorded just a third of Watford’s xG that day eight years ago, while playing a Palace team who conjured 16 shots of their own, and generated five big chances. Howe’s men didn’t have a single shot on goal, and became the first team to score in a Premier League match despite not having an effort on target since Watford against Southampton during Project Restart in June 2020.
Somehow, through a combination of saves from Nick Pope, blocks by Dan Burn and Palace’s wastefulness, the ball had not found the Newcastle net.
This would not have just been a smash-and-grab win. This would have been a burglary, pure and simple.
As it was, Newcastle left with a point and searching for answers that Howe could not provide. With 14 goals after 13 league games, only four teams in the division have scored fewer.
“It’s a difficult one to answer, because we haven’t changed anything,” Howe said, when asked why Newcastle were struggling to create chances. “You’re always trying to evolve and improve, but we certainly haven’t changed our attacking philosophy in any way.
“The teams I’ve managed have always, traditionally, scored goals. We’ve always been a very attacking, front-foot team, so nothing’s changed in our preparation or in that perspective. We’re just going through a phase, I think, at the moment where we’re struggling, but I think we’ll come out of that.”
Howe’s lack of explanation is itself concerning. If this is a phase, it is a phase in which Newcastle are lacking excuses.
They are not playing twice a week. They have every attacking option in the squad at their disposal available — with the possible exception of Lewis Miley, who continued his recovery from a foot injury with 79 minutes for the under-21 side on Friday — but a 17-year-old midfielder is not the answer to this attacking inertia.
Though Alexander Isak limped off after 20 minutes, the issues were so broad they cannot be explained by the Swedish striker’s chalk outline on the floor. It was not that chances weren’t being finished — it was that there were no chances to finish.
Even last season, when Newcastle’s XI often seemed to comprise whoever was fit on matchday, playing on little more than adrenaline, desperation, and painkillers, this side produced 85 goals, fourth-most in the Premier League. But another six months and one transfer window on, Newcastle’s toothlessness exposes squad-building issues.
Their scorer on Saturday was Guehi, the subject of four Newcastle bids over the summer. His own goal was unlucky, with the England centre-back excellent across the game, shutting the visitors down and assisting Daniel Munoz’s stoppage-time equaliser.
His pursuit was justifiable — or, at least, justifiable until it inhibited Newcastle’s ability to strengthen other areas of their squad. The lack of a specialist right-winger in the group is apparent — and has been for 18 months.
When Isak was substituted, Howe summoned Anthony Gordon from the right wing to lead the attack, overlooking the two recognised strikers he had on the bench in Callum Wilson and William Osula. Newcastle’s desire for a return to European football next season is naked, but they were exposed here — chasing the top four with a fragile first-choice striker and two replacements Howe did not feel comfortable bringing on.
Afterwards, the head coach said he could play Wilson for only around 20 to 30 minutes as he continues his recovery from a back injury that has meant he made his first appearance of the season against West Ham only five days earlier. So it seems Isak’s No 1 back-up is a player who has been available for fewer than half of Newcastle’s matches since the beginning of last season.
In theory, the club addressed this by purchasing young prospect Osula in the summer — their only outfield first-team signing of the window — but the 21-year-old has not been deemed ready.
𝐂𝐫𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝟏-𝟏 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐥𝐞
Crystal Palace were heading for defeat after Marc Guéhi’s own goal before Daniel Muñoz rescued a point late on.
Newcastle recorded just one shot in a PL game for the first time since August 2015 (vs Arsenal).#CRYNEW pic.twitter.com/6JjZz4Btl7
— Opta Analyst (@OptaAnalyst) November 30, 2024
Newcastle broke their transfer record a year earlier to sign Sandro Tonali as a player who can lighten the burden on Bruno Guimaraes in midfield. Here, Howe lined his side up for the first time with the Italian as the No 6, and Guimaraes afforded the relative freedom of No 8. And although what followed was one of Tonali’s better performances, with his well-weighted pass a key part of their goal, the team’s creativity from open play fell down a crevasse.
Despite the Tonali investment, Newcastle’s midfield incision amounts to Guimaraes, plus two other guys who give him the ball.
Post-match, Howe still insisted he was happy with the squad at his disposal. “I back the players,” he said. “I know we’ve got players that will score and create. I’ve got no issue with the quality of the players.”
So that leads back to where it began — Howe’s assertion that he cannot explain Newcastle’s toothlessness.
Perhaps, as a manager who knows how to approach the political side of his profession, Howe was being diplomatic, not wanting to admonish either his players or sporting director Paul Mitchell. Or perhaps, having said his side’s performance against Palace in the first two-thirds of the pitch contained “a lot of good”, his being nonplussed should be taken at face value.
“You can give general coordinates to the attacking lines, but the exploration of the last frontier is always individual,” once wrote former Ajax, Milan and Netherlands striker Marco van Basten, one of history’s greatest attacking players — although, it must be said, not subsequently one of its greatest coaches.
If Howe truly does not know the solution, that is a concern, yet he has proven himself too good a coach to truly believe the answer lies outside his ability.
Newcastle’s issue, however, is that the individual failings are becoming collective and threatening to become endemic.
And that’s the problem with losing teeth. Once they are gone, they rarely grow back.
(Top photo: CameraSport via Getty Images)
