These Newcastle United players – The trio just don’t work well enough as a unit | OneFootball

I’m fed up of hearing or thinking about Newcastle United injuries.

Reading that Joelinton could very likely miss the rest of the season, has finally done it for me in regards to any realistic late finish charge of going for the top six .

This season has gone for me as far as looking forward and aiming really high.

There are 17 Premier League games left to play, there’s the FA Cup still to play.

While we have some good players to return in Joe Willock, Callum Wilson, Tino Livramento, Harvey Barnes, Elliott Anderson and Jacob Murphy, by the time we have them fit and firing I suspect it will be too late and this season, whatever happens now, is nothing more than a salvaging job.

I don’t see any signings this month , so we go with what we have currently got, plus whatever we can get out of the injured players to return.

My biggest concern about the current eleven is the midfield.

Not the three individuals themselves in Bruno, Sean Longstaff or Lewis Miley, but the three of them as a unit. I don’t see a good balance there between them.

Bruno is an excellent player but his one flaw is a lack of pace.

The two others in question are no quicker.

So when they do venture forward they leave gaps and when the ball is lost they don’t have the ability to get back quick enough as a midfield and as a result they get cut open and the defence finds itself under more pressure than it should be facing.

The midfield last season had Bruno, Sean and the two Joes.

You had a great balance, a creative dictating playmaker in Bruno, a hard athletic grafter in Longstaff. Then between the two Joes, you had strength, pace, drive, athleticism and great pressing, plus we had the luxury of Elliot Anderson coming on to give the breather to one of them.

We are missing that drive, pace and strength, badly. There’s nobody else capable of stepping up and fixing it. The lack of options on the bench hardly helps either.

Until we install some pace and drive in that midfield, we won’t win enough games to make the big enough difference to save the season. These midfield three together aren’t capable of it. They’ve lost every league game on the four occasions they’ve played together and while I factor they’ve played the top two in Liverpool and Man City, none the less they were ripped apart with ease on the counter against Nottingham Forest at home and they couldn’t get on top of a very limited Luton midfield.

So it’s very simple for me, until that midfield gets sorted we won’t go anywhere.

I think things will improve if we can get enough games out of Elliot Anderson and Joe Willock but the main damage is already done.

I hope the midfield unit we’ve currently got available proves me wrong but I simply don’t see it working for us.

Tonali, Joelinton, Willock and Anderson. It’s a strong midfield unit, the three we have got as a unit now with no options to come on? I’m sorry it’s a bang average combination.