Newcastle United are not as good as they were last season, and Graeme Souness believes there are two key reasons why.
The 2022/23 campaign was a perfect storm for Newcastle United, and it culminated in them finishing in the top four and qualifying for the Champions League. It also saw Eddie Howe take his team to Wembley, where they were sadly beaten by Manchester United in the Carabao Cup final.
Pretty much everything went right for the Magpies last season. Our defence was incredibly tight, while Alexander Isak and Callum Wilson dovetailed expertly at the opposite end of the pitch.
This season has been the complete opposite. We have been leaking goals, while we have rarely had two fully fit centre forwards. Fortunately, Isak has taken on the goalscoring burden and has found the net 21 times.
There is no Wembley final for Newcastle this season, with both domestic cup journeys coming to an end at the quarter final stage. As for the Premier League, we need a miracle to finish high enough to qualify for the champions League. There is an outside chance of us coming fifth, but it is currently unclear if that will deliver Champions League football.
There are plenty of arguments as to why Newcastle have not done as well this season, and now former Toon boss Graeme Souness believes he has the answer.
Graeme Souness does not think Eddie Howe is to blame for Newcastle United dropping off
Souness has been speaking to Simon Jordan on the TalkSPORT YouTube channel, and looked at why Newcastle have failed to replicate what they achieved during the 2022/23 Premier League campaign.
“You have to analyse it,” he said.
“The manager won’t be doing anything different, he will be talking to them in the same way, the training will be the same.
“He will be trying to get them to do the same things that they were doing before and their travel arrangements will be the same.
“So nothing has changed from the manager and what he is doing with the group of players so it has to come back on the players.
“Injury has had an impact and then the modern game is all about the high press and intensity of the football, and if it drops off by half a yard it doesn’t work. I think it is a couple of those things, those two things I would point at. They are not as intense and injury has damaged them.”
Drop off was expected for Newcastle after last season’s highs
After doing so well last season, it was only natural that Newcastle’s form dropped off. Last year they did not have any European football to contend with, so the additional high profile fixtures was always going to have an impact.
Combine that with the injuries and it became an impossible task. Eddie Howe needed to rotate, but simply did not have the facilities to do that. There was some decent squad depth at the start of the season, but it was eviscerated by injury and the suspension to Sandro Tonali.
Injuries are the main reason Newcastle have struggled. It is not an excuse, it is just a fact. In turn, that has led to a drop off in intensity, which is the other issue that Souness identified.
Signs of life from Newcastle recently
But Newcastle are showing signs of recovery. Our intensity was excellent against Tottenham, and it led to us causing them huge problems. We forced multiple errors, and that resulted in an emphatic 4-0 win.
That performance needs to be our standard heading into the remaining games, while there is every reason to believe that next season can be a very positive one when the likes of Joelinton, Nick Pope and Tonali are available again.