Newcastle United Experts – Transition from tactics and set-up to medical team | OneFootball

This has been a challenging Newcastle United season.

Challenging for Eddie Howe more than anybody, these past five months or so seeing a near impossible situation with regularly half his first choice 20 or so players having been unavailable.

The Newcastle United Head Coach often finding that his starting eleven picks itself, with so few viable alternatives, as the injury situation has proved beyond a joke.

The one big positive though for Eddie Howe, is that he has had so much expert opinion to call on.

So many Newcastle United fans sitting in their bedrooms, giving out expert advice online, pointing out to the NUFC boss exactly where he is going so ‘obviously’ wrong.

Slagging him off for not picking this other formation that would for sure have seen Newcastle win not lose, or drop these three or four players… even though in reality there haven’t been credible alternatives available.

Now on Wednesday, the experts are back out to play, however, they have now transitioned to the medical side of things.

A lot of comments sparked by the official announcement (see below) that Sven Botman will now have surgery on his knee.

All the experts now going down the line of what were the club playing at with our Dutch defender, why did he come back and play instead of having an operation earlier in the season. These experts then broadening that out to the overall situation this season with injuries. As though, Eddie Howe and/or the medical side at the club have for sure made calamitous ‘obvious’ blunders in terms of how players / injuries have been handled.

I find it embarrassing, fans who want to instantly blame those at the club, as though it is fact that other decisions were obvious and beyond doubt that would have made the situation better this season.

The fact is that in so many instances, it is not an exact science, which is why it is called medical ‘opinion’, some decisions easy to make, some not so easy / obvious.

You also have to accept that in so many cases, Eddie Howe and his medical people will also be taking into account what a player is saying, how their injury / recovery feels to them, plus also whether they want surgery themselves if that is one of the options.

For Sven Botman to commit to an operation that would see him miss the best part of a year of football, would have been huge.

So to now try and say Eddie Howe, the medical team, or indeed Sven Botman himself, were supposedly clearly stupid for not deciding to have this surgery earlier, is out of order.

Newcastle United official announcement – 20 March 2024:

‘Newcastle United defender Sven Botman will undergo surgery next week after suffering a knee injury against Manchester City.

Following further assessment, a scan has confirmed that he sustained an injury to his ACL during Saturday’s match and he is expected to return to action within six-to-nine months.

The Dutch centre-back initially sustained a knee injury in September 2023 and elected for a non-surgical rehabilitation plan – a decision which saw him return to action in December.