True current Newcastle United position shown here – Premier League points last two and a half seasons | OneFootball

What would you say is the natural Newcastle United position in the Premier League these days?

A one-off season isn’t enough to go on for any club.

It is only when you get a longer run of form that you can start and draw conclusions.

As a little exercise, I thought I would look back at the last two and a half Premier League seasons.

Which is 95 Premier League matches, with 14 clubs having been in the top tier for all of those last three seasons.

In the case of Newcastle United, this is basically our form post-takeover, after giving Eddie Howe only around six weeks and eight PL matches to get his feet under the table at St James’ Park, before we judge him against the rest.

Total number of points accumulated by Premier League clubs these past two and a half seasons (In brackets, points picked up in final 19 games of 2021/22, plus all 38 games of 2022/23, plus all the matches of 2023/24):

226 Manchester City (46 + 89 +91)

207 Arsenal (34 + 84 + 89)

169 Newcastle United (38 +71 + 60)

163 Tottenham (35 + 60 + 68)

162 Manchester United (27 + 75 + 60)

152 Aston Villa (23 + 61 + 68)

140 Chelsea (33 + 44 + 63)

134 Brighton (24 + 62 + 48)

121 Brentford (23 + 59 + 39)

119 Crystal Palace (25 + 45 + 49)

117 West Ham (25 + 40 + 52)

110 Wolves (23 + 41 + 46)

96 Everton (20 + 36 + 40)

Conclusions

A very interesting picture emerging across these past two and a half Premier League seasons.

Manchester City way ahead of everybody else, with Arsenal and Liverpool way back, 19 and 24 points less respectively.

Another big drop of 33 points BUT intriguing to see Newcastle United clear as the fourth strongest team these past two and a half years.

Six and seven points ahead of Tottenham and Man U, 17 more points than Villa, 29 above Chelsea.

Not being disrespectful to others but looking at the points totals, it really feels like these eight clubs above are very likely to form some kind of ‘big eight’ moving forward.

If that’s the situation, then a case of how well Newcastle United can do within that top grouping, in the longer-term.

Quite remarkable how well Eddie Howe and his squad managed to do last season despite that unprecedented number of missing players. To still post 60 points is staggering really and points to the quality of Eddie Howe and his squad.

I am very confident that even with average luck on injuries last season, Newcastle United would have at least matched the 2022/23 season and ended with 71+ points in 2023/24. Which would have put NUFC on 180+ points accumulated in the last two and a half years, way ahead of the rest and closing more on those top three.

These 169 points in 95 Premier League matches over two and a half seasons, equals an average of around 1.78 points per game, which when then averaged over a 38 match season, gives 68 points.

This two and a half seasons worth of Premier League form, strongly shows (proves?) that Newcastle United are now a Champions League club.