Spiralling into full on catastrophe mode – Sections of the Newcastle United fanbase | OneFootball

First things first, Saturday’s loss against Brighton was easily our worst result of the season.

Brighton turned up with several key players missing and a hugely speculative game plan but still managed to leave with three points.

However, the loss seems to have sent certain sections of the Newcastle United fanbase spiralling into full on catastrophe mode.

Hot takes thrown around all over the place, from the back pages to social media, including but not limited to; Callum Wilson should have been sold in January 2023 over Chris Wood; Howe should be sacked for poor recruitment/team selections; Paul Mitchell should be sacked for poor recruitment.

To be honest you can find probably a dozen or more of these “measured” opinions knocking around and it makes you wonder how these individuals exist in their day to day lives?

Burned my dinner… I’m going to starve!

Late to pick the kids up from school… they’re on their own now!

Utter overreaction at all times.

Joking aside, people are completely right to feel upset when the team comes up short, I for one was still angry about the result on Monday.

However, drawing conclusions when you’re feeling emotional never leads to anything good and, as bad a result as the loss on Saturday was, we are far from the season being a catastrophe.

In fact, if you detach yourself from the emotion of the defeat, statistically Saturday’s performance was in many ways Newcastle’s best attacking display of the season.

I know, I know… the only statistic that really matters is the final score, but there is value in the numbers behind the performances and Newcastle United have been trending in the right direction over the past few games.

I’d be willing to wager if the Brighton game was played 20 times, Newcastle United would come away with the win more than 50% of the time.

Now I’m not one to throw around statements without doing a bit of research to back them up, so I have compiled a table of some of our key attacking statistics over the past five Premier League games to provide some context.

What is immediately noticeable when looking at the Newcastle United numbers for the past five games, is that the Brighton game represented statistical highs in every category apart from xG (Expected Goals), however, the game against Everton did feature a penalty which accounts for about 0.76 xG. Against Brighton we fashioned more shots (although not enough on target), had more chances inside the box than any other game this season, and had almost Man City levels of touches in the opposition box.

Touches inside the box is a good indication of the attacking intent of the team. Possession of the ball is meaningless without intent and clearly over the past couple of games out intent has been there to see.

The biggest improvement for me though, and one of my personal favourite stats when it comes to the age old question of could/should we have won a game, is the number of big chances created. Stats gurus Opta define a big chance as “A situation where a player should reasonably be expected to score, usually in a one on one scenario or from very close range when the ball has a clear path to goal and there is low to moderate pressure on the shooter. Penalties are always considered big chances.” From a fan’s perspective it is those moments when you look at a chance and think “he’s got to score that.”

Many people talk about xG when it comes to measuring a team’s attacking output but one drawback of xG is that it is a cumulative stat. A team can hog possession and rack up a number of speculative efforts from range but never truly create a big chance to score, while their opponent can play defensively sound and wait for their moment to create a big chance from a counter-attack or a set piece. Think anyone playing against Spurs for an example. Big Chances are just a much better indicator of how dangerous your team is.

In terms of big chances, Newcastle created four against Brighton, our highest number of the season and as many as we had managed in our previous three outings combined. Our biggest problem on Saturday and it was one that I and many others highlighted, is that we didn’t convert these. This is actually pretty unusual in the Eddie Howe era, where we have been amongst the most efficient finishers in the division for the past couple of years.

In 2023/24 and 2022/23 we have created an average of 3.8 and 3.0 big chances per game respectively, missing 1.8 of these on average in both seasons. So far this season we have only created 2.1 big chances per game and missed 1.5 of these per game. So there has been a big drop off in the number of clear-cut chances we have fashioned up until Brighton this season, which makes the missed ones stand out much more. The fact we created four big chances against Brighton puts us closer to our typical output over the past couple of seasons.

A brief look at the defence suggests we are also closer in terms of our performance from the 2022/23 season rather than last year’s shaky showing.

We have probably conceded a few too many big chances ourselves, but overall, we are averaging one goal against per game (22/23 was 0.9). If that remains the same moving forward and we can continue to create chances like we did against Brighton, then hopefully Newcastle United will start to pick up the results we all crave.