3 Positives and 3 Negatives to take from Newcastle 2 Chelsea 0

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The Mag

·31 Oktober 2024

3 Positives and 3 Negatives to take from Newcastle 2 Chelsea 0

Wednesday night’s match ended Newcastle 2 Chelsea 0.

Ahead of each match we ask one of our writers to come up with three positives and three negatives following the game.

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Plenty to talk about after this one…

POSITIVES

CarabHowe Cup

This is Eddie Howe’s third Carabao Cup campaign with us and he’s not failed to get us to the quarter finals yet.

Nice to get to that stage by dispatching the team who were fortunate to stop us progressing to the semis last season. A home draw against Brentford gives us a huge opportunity to get back to the semis once more.

Goals galore

Well not quite.

It was nice to see us bag two goals in a game for the first time since we beat Wolves on September 15th. We had a third chalked off for offside too which I thought looked tight and would have been interesting to view from a better angle. Had VAR been in play, we may have added to our tally.

We pressed so effectively in the first half, forcing errors repeatedly whilst keeping a balance, so we didn’t leave gaping holes when Chelsea had the ball. This was much, much better.

Nice to see Isak take his chance. He was scoring goals like that all last season. Hopefully he’s got his magic touch back.

Back up at the back

Two of our five changes were in defence and I thought both Kelly and Krafth were excellent. Kelly looked comfortable on the ball and made a number of important blocks and challenges.

Krafth dealt with all dangers down their left and made a couple of brilliant bursts forward. One at the end almost set up Osula for his first goal but the youngster hammered a vicious strike against the post.

Hall was fantastic again too and is going to be difficult to displace when we have a full roster.

Doesn’t fit into any of the above but it was lovely to see young Miley back too.

NEGATIVES

How do we compete?

Both teams made changes, although we only made five alterations to our side. Our starting eleven cost us around £270 million to assemble.

Meanwhile, Chelsea shuffled their entire pack but were still able to field £440 million worth of talent. This is a team that hasn’t even registered their best player, Palmer, for their Europa League squad.

On the night we competed, and won, but over the course of a season we are nowhere near having the resources that Chelsea and so many other Premier League sides have. We’re still playing catch up and it would be worth remembering that at times.

Chelsea have an enviable amount of depth and seem to be working every possible angle to ensure they balance the PSR books. There must be a trick or two we can nick from their cheat manual.

Sketchy second half

We didn’t play anywhere near as well in the second half. The truth is that we didn’t need to as we had a two goal lead to defend. We sat very deep at times though and invited pressure.

Chelsea had several chances and with fifteen minutes to go had a gilt-edged one on one which Felix put wide. Had that gone in it would have been a nervy last quarter of an hour.

We may not have been able to keep up the first half energy for ninety minutes though and, with a massive clash on Saturday to prepare for, the gameplan worked well.

Sky Sports + is naff

I gave up streaming games ages ago because I was fed up with the quality.

If I’m not at a game and it’s not on TV, I just listen to it on the radio instead.

It’s great that every Carabao Cup game is covered this season but if you’re not the main feature on Sky you get their Sky + (should that be Sky -) coverage instead. It’s frustrating how many times the picture blurred, especially if we were breaking away.

On one run, I could see four Lewis Halls racing down the wing being pursued by twelve Chelsea players. On top of that, I didn’t particularly enjoy the commentating. The pair didn’t seem to know what they were on about half the time.

They kept misnaming players and at one point claimed, ‘they’re having a look at this, I think,’ after Gordon and Madeuke came together in the box. Most of us knew there was no VAR on the night but the commentator thought that VAR was reviewing the incident as the play had stopped for a few seconds.

Newcastle 2 Chelsea 0 – Wednesday 30 October 7.45pm

Goals:

Newcastle United:

Isak 23, Disasi OG 26

Chelsea:

Possession was Newcastle 35% Chelsea 65%

Total shots were Newcastle 8 Chelsea 17

Shots on target were Newcastle 2 Chelsea 4

Corners were Newcastle 1 Chelsea 9

Touches in the box Newcastle 18 Chelsea 30

Newcastle United team v Chelsea:

Pope, Krafth, Schar, Kelly, Hall (Burn 72), Joelinton, Tonali (Miley 90+2), Longstaff, Willock, (Bruno 63), Isak (Osula 63), Gordon (Livramento 72)