Newcastle United ‘miss’ £35m West Ham star as £120m decision ‘doesn’t make a whole lot of sense’

Stand still, you go backwards, right? Well, you wouldn't imagine a team who'd spent an estimated £120million in the summer transfer window would manage to be worse off for it. Somehow, Newcastle United look like they are.

You may agree with that statement, you may not. However, the statistics do not lie. It took the Magpies 'til February this year to lose their second game of the 2022/23 Premier League season. They've now lost three of their first four.

In many ways, Newcastle feels like a club trying to run before it can even walk. Here's at where that rule applies - and some other thoughts from an utterly abject afternoon on the south coast.

Have Newcastle become this season's 'predictable' team?

Plan A, executed was expertly last season, blowing teams away with pace, power and intensity, looks a distant memory.

Where has it gone? Have Newcastle lost something? Have teams worked them out? If so, where is the Plan B?

Eddie Howe has more questions than answers at the moment. He's provided those answers in the past, but will need to use this international break for a swift rethink of the tactics which their last three opponents - all top six rivals - have worked out and exploited at ease.

Would last season's team beat this? Yes. The answer is undoubtedly, yes.

Sluggish midfield - balance is far from right

Watching West Ham United on Friday evening, it was clear to see the value placed in a holding midfielder by David Moyes. Mexican Edson Alvarez broke up play, helped his team wrestle control and build from deep. Newcastle don't have anything like a player of that profile - and in games like this, where straight, targeted balls up to the striker, right through the middle, were so key, a shield in front of the back four was badly missed.

Bruno Guimaraes didn't even get close to the levels of his counterpart in blue and white, Billy Gilmour, who looked every bit the world class talent many thought he'd be when emerging from Cobham a few years back.

Losing Sean Longstaff from the right has taken legs and pressing from the midfield, and Joelinton, in my opinion, still remains better suited to a left forward role, as in games like this, against remarkably well drilled and clever teams, the game has a tendency to pass him by.

The left-back conundrum that draws confusing answers - Burn, Targett & Hall

Howe decided last season that Matt Targett was not the man he wanted to play left-back. As we all know, Dan Burn got the nod.

That was again underlined when the club dipped into the market for another player in that role, Lewis Hall.

Howe says he is nowhere near fit, having only really started his pre-season on arrival. One injury in defence has seen two positional shifts, a third in the second half when Targett's misery was ended by the arrival of club captain Jamaal Lascelles.

What might well be right in the medium term, looks ill thought out in the short.

'Champions League, you're havin' a larf'

The message from the Brighton faithful was loud and clear. Newcastle United, on this given Saturday, looked a millions miles short of one of the best teams the English Premier League has to offer.

Fans have been salivating over a trips to Milan, Dortmund and Paris, and rightly so. But so too will the attackers of those respective clubs, if they watch back the highlights from the Amex - and the last 10 minutes against Liverpool. Truth is - and it’s an uncomfortable one - if Newcastle play like this consistently, that's the only European football this side will see this season - and maybe next.

Summer business under the microscope

Newcastle are not yet a club who can build for the future, not at the cost of the present, anyway. Of course, solid foundation is the required for any team. But neglecting the here and now can have grave consequences.

The Magpies signed four senior players in the summer window. They've been able to find a place for only one of them in the starting XI of the opening four games. And even in Sandro Tonali, there's an argument to say his planting on the right of the three has come at the cost of what Longstaff brought to the side.

While Harvey Barnes will undoubtedly add goals and end product to the team, in time, it's hard to see where Tino Livramento fits into the side, when Kieran Trippier has proven in the past he's reluctant to give up the shirt.

Hall, it's hoped, will get up to speed further during the international break. They've added youthful depth and quality, but arguably not in any of the major positions in need on an upgrade.

As mentioned previously, a No.6, a Premier League-ready left-back, centre-half cover and a right-sided player were all overlooked in order to land other targets. In a summer which was framed as a 'tight one' when it comes to FFP and cash to spend, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.