The bold £78m Newcastle United double transfer deal that could haul Magpies back to top four next season

Newcastle United’s season has been peculiar in that the excitement of seeing Champions League football return

to St. James’ Park has been somewhat muted by a somewhat disappointing seventh-place result. Despite the

fact that results have fallen short of expectations, there are enough good reasons to keep the team feeling like

they are making progress.

Even though Tyneside is currently full of optimism, that will likely change if they miss the playoffs by a wide

margin the following year. Although they may have been unlucky with injuries recently, this shouldn’t hide the

fact that some personnel changes will undoubtedly be required. There have been performance problems that

haven’t been related to fitness issues.

To begin with, this season their defense has been a challenge. This season, one of the tighter defenses of 2022–

2023 was only able to function at a mid-table level; they gave up 62 goals at a pace nearly identical to that of the

possession game, which is more than twice as many goals and chances as Arsenal managed. While it is true that other teams performed better offensively than defensively—Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur, for example—

defense still makes a significant difference between Newcastle and the elite teams.

They have given up a lot of opportunities on counterattacks and in transition, which is partly to be expected

when you press so hard but also a sign that opposing teams are beginning to understand Howe’s tactics. The

fact that Nick Pope has missed a major portion of the season hasn’t helped either; they began giving up more

goals as soon as Martin Dźbravka entered the game, mostly because the Slovakian isn’t very comfortable

outside of his area and wasn’t as good as Pope at stopping direct attacks.

However, Aaron Ramsdale might be headed in and Pope is returning, so that issue will be resolved eventually.

It’s a different story at left-back. Despite being the starter for the majority of the season, Dan Burn has shown to

be a liability in a system that is susceptible to fast counters because he is simply too slow.

For this reason, it’s strange that Newcastle hasn’t been strongly associated with many left-backs recently.

Oleksandr Zinchenko, the out-of-favour Arsenal midfielder, is a name that frequently comes up, yet despite

being a great player in many ways, he may also have trouble handling straight plays over the top. Lloyd Kelly

could be useful in this situation.

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