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Newcastle United suffered defeat for the first time this season as they lost 3-1 at Craven Cottage. Another poor performance to add to this season’s disappointing catalogue as a second best United came away from London with nothing.
Fulham dominated the first 45 and were 2-0 up at the breakthrough Raul Jiménez and Emile Smith-Rowe, both goals were terrible to concede from a defensive point of view with Schar slack in marking Jiménez for the first and Pope flapping at the second. United scored early in the second half through Barnes but an awful Bruno pass allowed Nelson to grab a third in stoppage time to wrap up the win for Fulham.
Here are our five key takeaways from the game:
Midfield Balance
When the teams were announced a midfield three of Willock, Bruno, and Joelinton seemed like a positive move from Eddie Howe to inject some direct running and technical ability into the middle of the park.
Two hours later and that change was thoroughly dumped as Fulham twice bypassed the midfield in transition to go 2-0 in front. In a worrying trend, it kept happening too with further chances for Smith-Rowe, Traoré and Jiménez. In a truly perturbing trend, it has happened in every away game so far this season too.
Howe tried to fix the problem by shifting to a 4-2-3-1 at half time and it initially looked a positive change with a quick Barnes strike in the second half, but midfield balance is starting to become a real concern. Add in last season’s woes, when the midfield three was often bypassed with one pass to opposition players drifting between the lines, and midfield balance is becoming a huge headache Howe needs to solve ASAP.
If only we had a technical, hard running, intelligent central midfielder available to us…
Terrible First Half’s Continue
So far this season Newcastle have been slow starters in the league and have had to come back from first half deficits to pick up points in two games and recover from any early red card in another….
Source link : https://www.nufcblog.co.uk/2024/09/22/five-takeaways-from-fulham-3-1-newcastle-balance-bruno-big-week-worrying-stats/
Author : Jonathan Young
Publish date : 2024-09-22 11:11:03
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