I was interested to read this about Newcastle United on The Mag on Thursday morning.
It got me thinking.
It was the usual feature on The Mag, where someone writes about three positives and three negatives from the most recent game.
So it was about the Newcastle 2 Spurs 2 match last night.
As you all know, somehow there were no goals for Newcastle United in the first 70 minutes and then we only took the lead twice with Spurs equalizing each time.
Romero with both goals, the second in extra time.
Anyway, in terms of the positives and negatives this morning, one of the negatives got me thinking.
‘The late late shows
It was the fifth time this season that we conceded extra time. Please United, make it stop.
Can they concentrate more on this during training? It’s bad game management.
This season we have suffered too often from late pathogens.
We’re better than this, right.’
What got me thinking was that I was struggling to remember the last game when a goal in extra time had cost us.
The author of the article said this morning that this was the fifth time we had suffered from ‘late illnesses’ in the extra time.
I thought I would do a little fact checking to see how many points had been lost before this Spurs game.
The most recent time United conceded in extra time was November 9, away at Brentford. A goal in the 96th minute, but Newcastle were already losing 2-1 with only ten men, so no loss of points from the late goal and Newcastle obviously had to try to get the equalizer, so had no choice but for the 10 men to try.
Before that it was in West Ham on November 2. Very similar to Brentford, but this time we were still down to ten men, already 2-1 down and trying to get an equalizer, but in the 97th minute the Hammers scored after half-time. However, no points were lost due to that goal, as NUFC already did not score any points.
For that you have to go all the way back to September 28, the home match against Arsenal. Now that was sickening! But deep into extra time the crowd urged Newcastle to go for the winner and our players tried to do that but a number of things went wrong and instead Arsenal got the winner in the 96th minute. For me, that match was all about Saliba’s cowardly cynical challenge when Tino Livramento was in the air. That challenge meant the defender had to stretch the pitch and was absent for a long period of time. United had defended well and were 1-0 up at the time, but Tino’s injury really killed us. Anyway you know what happened, Arsenal equalized and as they chased the winner, Pope’s long clearance in the last minute was picked up by Arsenal, they eventually won a corner and scored from it.
The only other occasion this season to concede in extra time was the first home game of the season on August 25 against Liverpool. Liverpool came back brilliantly from 2-0 down with ten men and with the crowd urging the players on to go for the winner, with NUFC on top, Liverpool created a chance on half-time and scored a cruel winner in the 100th minute!
It was absolutely terrible, but like I said, we all pushed the players to go for the win. I don’t think it was anything disastrous from Eddie Howe or even from our players. In that match, Newcastle couldn’t get enough of the many chances we created, even with ten men, while Liverpool failed to capitalize on almost all of their few chances. Even Jamie Carragher admitted it was incredible how lucky the scousers had been.
The idea that conceding goals in extra time has been such a disaster for Newcastle United this season simply doesn’t add up when the facts are checked.
Of course it was sickening when Romero scored his second equalizer as Thiaw and Ramsdale should have done better.
However, in all 20 games before Spurs this season, it was only the Liverpool and Arsenal games where an extra-time goal turned a game negatively for Newcastle United. Eddie Howe’s team lost a total of two points, which would have resulted in a draw against those pair.
I watched all 21 games for Newcastle United this season.
When it comes to goals scored/scored from 80 minutes onwards, it appears that Newcastle have scored eight goals in the later stages of the matches and the opposition teams have scored a total of seven. United actually have a slight edge when it comes to late goals in the 80th minute and beyond.
You have to keep things in perspective.
We were all gutted when that goal came on Tuesday night and cost us two points, as were Eddie Howe and his players.
However, this is not an epidemic.
In the twenty games before Tottenham, I can’t really fault the team for what happened late in the game against Liverpool, so in reality I think it’s only that game against Arsenal where the team threw away a point this season (so far!!!).
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