Premier League Baseline Tracker – What it says about Newcastle United start to the season | OneFootball

The Premier League resumes, after it’s latest international break, this weekend and Newcastle United pick up with a record of three wins, three draws and one loss.

There’s been a lot written over the past two weeks about Newcastle’s start to the season, but for some, the draw at Everton left a sense of frustration.

I wrote in my post-match reactions that any point away in the Premier League has value, though at the same time it did feel like two points dropped.

Over the past week or so I’ve been thinking about the point gained, rather than the points dropped and, as I often am, I was drawn to the Twitter/X posts from The Other 14 (@Other14The) to help me reach some conclusions.

For anyone not familiar with The Other 14 and their content, it revolves primarily around their Premier League Baseline Tracker.

As their name suggests, the purpose of the information they post, is to remove the influence of the so called “big-six” and provide a more balanced idea of how a team is performing.

In a nutshell, the Premier League Baseline Tracker assumes that teams from The Other 14 should win their home fixtures against other teams from The Other 14, providing a baseline of 39 points (typically seen as enough to avoid relegation). Wins and draws away against fellow Other 14 teams contribute positive points towards your baseline (the losing home team loses points) and any result against a “big six” team goes in the plus column with negative results ignored.

Now a few years ago I used to check in on how Newcastle United were stacking up against the other 14 to provide comfort that we were doing OK in the relegation scrap we often found ourselves in. However, over the past couple of seasons I’ve noticed it is also a very handy indicator about how we are doing in general for our quest for Europe.

I reached out to The Other 14 and they were kind enough to send me over the Premier League Baseline Tracker from the 22/23 Premier League season when we secured 4th place.

As you can see, Newcastle finished a whopping 32 points ahead of the 39 point baseline. Brighton and Aston Villa’s 23 and 22 point finishes were good enough respectively for 6th and 7th place.

They also shared last season’s Premier League Baseline Tracker where it was Aston Villa’s turn to secure a coveted top 4 finish and Newcastle secured what should have been a European clinching 7th place.

So, in a typical premier league season, the target when it comes to this tracker, to secure Champions League football, is around 30 points. This puts you in and around the 70 point mark for the season which has been good enough for Champions League qualification for six of the past eight seasons.

Given the new format in Europe this year, the chances of the Premier League securing an extra Champions League spot is pretty decent at the moment. If that is the case, then a points haul in the high 60s for the season should be sufficient for top five.

Newcastle currently sit 7th in the Premier League table, just behind Aston Villa and Brighton, plus one place above Fulham. I know I have spoken to some fans who are a little anxious that we should be higher in the table but, if we take a look at the current standings in the Premier League Baseline Tracker, there is perhaps cause for a little more optimism.

Newcastle currently hold a slender lead over Villa and Brighton and already have a healthy gap from teams like Fulham, Forest and West Ham.

At this early stage of the season the league table can often be a very misleading measure of success. Depending on the fixtures you are given, the difficulty of matches a team can face over the first couple of months can vary wildly. Looking elsewhere in the Premier League, this is no more obvious than when looking at the sides that sit top and bottom.

Liverpool sit proudly top of the division winning six of their first seven games, however, look a little deeper and you’ll see that all six wins have been against teams in the bottom half and the only side they have played from the current top 10 beat them.

On the other hand, Wolves have yet to register their first win of the season, picking up a solitary point against Liverpool’s conquerors Nottingham Forest. However, again if you look deeper, you’ll see that Wolves have only played one side that sits outside the current top 10. Furthermore, when you look at their results against The Other 14, their only dropped points in relation to the Premier League Baseline Tracker are against Newcastle.

So, the point I am trying to make with all of this, is that despite Newcastle not firing on all cylinders for much of the first two months of the season, we have been quietly racking up much needed points in games where maybe we failed to last season.

This weekends’ fixture against Brighton is huge in the context of our season, with the fixtures against Chelsea and Arsenal less so.

Threepoints against the Seagulls this weekend would be a significant step in the right direction and maybe we can all relax and enjoy the journey back to Europe!

Again, a massive thanks to @Other14The for providing the stats. Please give them a follow on X if you haven’t already.