Features
WyAyeScout: How the Magpies are shaping up ahead of the run-in
Written by Kev Lawson
In the latest feature in a series for nufc.co.uk, WyAyeScout founder and editor Kev Lawson takes a statistics-led look into how Newcastle United are playing heading into the final few months of the season…
Following his team's 2-0 defeat to Newcastle United, Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag suggested that Eddie Howe's men had played "above their levels" during their victory at St. James' Park.
After the Magpies leapfrogged their opponents into third place, it feels like a good time to test his theory and review Newcastle United's recent performances as we enter the last ten games of the season.
A good place to start with this is by using a radar plot to take a look at the underlying numbers behind the league's tightest defence.
As we've seen this season, Howe's team defend from the front, putting pressure on their opponents high up the pitch in order to cause mistakes in possession and get the ball back quicker.
Whenever the opposition has managed to play through the press and get into Newcastle's final third and penalty area, they've often been thwarted by the form of Nick Pope, who is having a great first season with the Magpies.
When they have the ball, Newcastle United are also among the best teams in the league when it comes to generating shots and threatening the opposition's goal.
While the radars show us that Newcastle are better than the league average on both sides of the ball, it's only when you plot their expected goals for and against to a scatter graph that their true level among their league rivals becomes clearer.
In fact, if it hadn't been for a dip in form in front of goal during January and February, things could have been looking even better for United at the top end of the table.
But that's part of the fun of football. If it always followed the numbers, it would be a less exciting spectacle. By using trendlines we can show how their expected goal difference (xG difference) and their real world results have aligned across the season so far.
So how about the Magpies' recent form? We know about that dip in front of goal, but how did it impact performance in other areas of the game? Let's head back to our radars covering league games in 2023.
Again, we can check this against the performances of Newcastle's rivals in that timeframe too, and see that the impressive consistency of the Magpies' underlying expected goals data still sees them among the league leaders.
All football fans know that goals change games, and it appears it was only Newcastle's inability to take their chances at anything close to the robust averages provided by expected goals that saw them slip down the table.
It's rare for a team to perform quite so far behind their expected goals for long periods of time, however. Step forward the club's record signing, Alexander Isak.
A wider look at the other metrics that indicate how well Newcastle United are implementing their tactics also show that Eddie Howe's men are on an upwards trajectory in a number of key areas.
When we look at how the team is moving the ball into the danger area we can also observe that, despite some fan worries about United's attacking, the strength of the Magpies on the right-hand side of the pitch remains.
Finally, let's take a look at how time on the pitch has been split across the older and younger players across the United squad.
We can see that some of Newcastle's most experienced players have been available for a large portion of the season. There's also a core of new, younger players who have established themselves as regulars and a subset of younger players who may be needed to freshen up the team for the games that remain.
To finish, all that remains is to ponder where United will finish the season. A glance at our remaining fixtures suggests that right now, they are in control of their own destiny, as a team in good form and improving all the time.
United fans can dare to dream again.