New starters’ instant impact as formation change pays off
What we learned from Newcastle’s victory
NEWCASTLE United got their new season off to the perfect start with a 2-0 win against West Ham at the London Stadium.
West Ham twice hit the crossbar in the first half but Callum Wilson broke the deadlock after the break with a poacher’s finish before the hour mark.
Jeff Hendrick, another new arrival, doubled the Magpies’ advantage late on after lashing the ball into the top corner following good work from Miguel Almiron.
Here are five things we learned from the game . . .
CALLUM WILSON ALREADY MAKING AN IMPACT
If you gave Wilson the choice to pick who he came up against on his Newcastle United debut, you can bet the striker would have picked West Ham.
The England international had previously scored seven Premier League goals against the Hammers for Bournemouth, so perhaps it was not a surprise that he broke the deadlock at the London Stadium in his first match in a black-and-white shirt.
After Hendrick flicked on Javier Manquillo’s cross, Wilson was in the right place to knock the ball past Lukasz Fabianski with his first effort on target just before the hour mark.
The basics you expect from a centre forward – let alone a £20m striker – are that he gets into the box, links up with his team-mates and gets shots away, but for too often last season, Newcastle lacked that presence up front.
A CHANGE OF FORMATION AND MENTALITY
Steve Bruce previously feared
his side were not ready to play with a back four, but it says a lot about how things have changed that the Newcastle head coach used a 4-4-2 on the road on the opening day – and it worked.
A n d y Carroll was handed a start up front against his former club alongside new signing Wilson, and it fell to Allan SaintMaximin and Hendrick to play out wide.
While
Hendrick and Saint-maximin like to drift and operate in central areas, Manquillo and Jamal Lewis were encouraged to bomb on and offer natural width down the flanks.
What will have encouraged Bruce is how the quartet combined on a number of occasions to good
effect – for example, Saint-maximin knew that if he managed to hold on to the ball for an extra couple of seconds, Lewis would offer support down the overlap.
It marked a real change from how Newcastle played in the first half of last season when the Magpies sat deep, soaked up pressure and looked to hit teams on the counter-attack.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE BENCH
Playmaker Almiron will have been disappointed not to have started this one, but it says it all about the Paraguay international’s attitude that he quickly made an impact when he chance late on.
It was Almiron who had West Ham’s tired defenders back-pedalling before he calmly picked out Hendrick to seal the victory for the Magpies on 87 minutes.
Bruce may be without a number of injured players at the moment, but he has plenty of attacking options in reserve. So much so, Ryan Fraser did not even get on the field.
got
ALLAN SAINT-MAXIMIN WILL BE A MARKED MAN
his
Pablo Zabaleta may no longer be at
West Ham but the Hammers do not need reminding of what SaintMaximin can do after the Frenchman’s performance in the corresponding fixture last season.
When these two sides met 315 days previously, at the London Stadium, Newcastle repeatedly exploited Manuel Pellegrini’s high line and Saint-maximin got in behind time and time again.
This time around, whenever SaintMaximin picked the ball up there were up to four players around him quickly and they were not shy in fouling him. Ryan Fredericks’ heavy challenge in the first half epitomised the tactic and it is probably something SaintMaximin will have to get used to now that he is a household name in England.
Saint-maximin was the most fouled player on the opening day of the Premier League season and defenders are now well aware that they cannot afford to give him space to run into.
THE IDEAL WAY TO START THE SEASON
Newcastle do not traditionally race out of the blocks but this was the ideal fixture to lay down a marker on the opening day as the Magpies look to mount a top-10 challenge.
The black and whites had not won an opening day fixture for eight years and you have to go back to 2007 for the last time they claimed three points on the road on the first day of the season.
To put that hoodoo into perspective, Sam Allardyce was the club’s manager when Newcastle triumphed at Bolton 13 years ago, and it was Charles N’zogbia and Obafemi Martins who fired the visitors to a 3-1 win.