Maybe time to try this with Nick Woltemade and Yoane Wissa after seeing that against Aston Villa

I try not to be reactionary as a football fan. There are enough voices saying that it’s the end of the world after a loss, or that we are world beaters after we win, but even for someone who tries to stay level, the Newcastle United two goal defeat to Aston Villa was a bad watch.

After the first minute when Sandro missed the chance that he made wonderfully for himself, and really should have put away, we were second best.

So easy to play through, completely at a loss when it came to figuring out Rogers and Buendia, and lacking a spark going forward.

It’s pretty easy to point to the lack of Bruno Guimaraes in the middle, and although that had an effect, I would describe the main issue that it was fluidity vs rigidity – the rock had no answer to the water flowing around it.

We know what we are going to get with Eddie Howe; 4-3-3 with one deep lying midfielder, one playmaker and one destroyer. If we know that, we can be sure that every manager and coach in the league knows that too.

Aston Villa played with the now fashionable (thanks to Pep) box midfield. Onana and Tielemans deep with Beundia and Rogers higher. Sancho provided width and kept Hall from coming inside to support, Watkins stayed high keeping the CBs honest, but he did also drop in between the lines when he fancied it. This meant we were constantly over run in the centre of the pitch.

Big Joe was probably our best player, Tonali did what he could and probably gets a 6.5/10, and Botman was the only one on the pitch other than Pope worth a 7 (Pope a 7.5).

Miley isn’t mobile enough yet. Whether that is a physicality thing (I don’t think so as he makes those runs into the right wing channel very well) or an experience thing, who knows for sure? But, there were a number of occasions where Tonali was making the press that Miley should have been making instead, leaving us unbalanced in that deeper lying CM role. If Bruno was playing, he would have naturally dropped in creating that double pivot with Sandro, and this would have had the dual benefit of closing off a lot of the space that Villa exploited so well, and providing a better platform for us to move the ball forwards ourselves. But if Miley comes in for Bruno, then surely that should be his responsibility as well? He will be forgiven for anything though, he is only 19 and is well ahead of schedule in his development, but I mentioned in my last article that he isn’t the answer in the middle of the park yet, and I stick by that after today. He wasn’t bad but he wasn’t enough.

Then there was the bizarre decision to have Barnes playing as a second striker during the first half. So often he was central when the ball went out wide, meaning that it was down to Miley to make the runs into that channel to provide any width at all. Would it not have been better to do that with Gordon? Have Barnes on the left, Gordon on the right but focusing on supporting Wissa? Barnes was entirely anonymous in the first half and not much better in the second. Gordon had a couple of good runs down the line followed by awful crosses that went straight out of play, other than that, he played with his back to goal, therefore offering very little in terms of threat.

Now, having played a lot of football to a decent, but not astonishing level, and coached a very successful youth side, I understand that players have off days. There are many reasons for this, but I don’t think it was a bad game for individuals, but rather it was a bad game for our system. Too predictable and not able to come up with answers off the cuff when serious questions were asked.

Take their first goal. It came after  a terrible touch from Wissa (not a hold up striker) and they broke. Tonali was isolated against Rogers, and Buendia (Botman should have closed Buendia down), and he was bypassed so easily. It was a great finish but he should not have been allowed that sort of time and space on the edge of our box. A double pivot or more commitment in the retreat might just have helped us avoid that.

How many times did we have reasonable moves down the line ruined by a poor ball into the box. Actually, some of the balls were great, but there was no one within 10 yards of them. If Miley had lifted his head up before he pinged it in, there was often a cut back option on running in from deeper. Does Eddie coach the early ball in (which I am actually a huge fan of)? If he does, then why doesn’t he coach our strikers to be on the shoulder of the last man? Weird how often that happened today.

There were a couple of positives: Elanga looked a threat when he came on. Lightning pace, direct running and some great deliveries that Woltemade should have gambled on.

I also thought Ramsey looked okay after he replaced Joelinton, but really, it was an abject performance that I think raises some legitimate questions about our Head Coach.

I love Eddie Howe and hope he stays with us for many years…but I also think he really needs to develop his team more tactically.

When we play so many games in a season, we can’t rely on this ‘Intensity is our identity’ over and over again, particularly with so many games when we qualify for Europe.

Maybe it’s time to think about a double pivot with Nick Woltemade in the hole behind Yoane Wissa? Something has to be done because it wasn’t very difficult for Villa to do us today.