West Ham vs Newcastle United Tactical Preview 12/09/2020
There’s no point in doing full-blown tactical preview posts until teams have settled and there’s some performance data to work with, so this is just a brief overview of the game at the weekend.
Based on the lineups from their last couple of friendlies…
… it looks like Newcastle have been setting up in a 4–2–3–1 with Sean Longstaff as a 10 and Andy Carroll up top (God help us).
Bruce’s time at Newcastle has basically been one big push-pull between playing with 3-at-the-back and with a flat back 4. After taking over last summer, Bruce tried to move the team away from the sit-deep-and-counter approach of Rafa Benítez’s 3–4–3 but some early poor results — including a 5–0 defeat to Leicester when Newcastle switched to a back 4 for the first time (Hayden was sent off just before half-time tbf) — led Bruce to claim that his players weren’t comfortable playing a different system.
Newcastle then reverted to type, stuck to what they knew, and were generally fucking atrocious — they finished the Premier League season with the 17th best attacking record, the 14th best defensive record, the worst xG total, the 17th best xGA record, and the second worst xGDifference overall.
But tucked away in the end of the season was a nugget of hope for the Magpies. In the last few games prior to lockdown, Bruce got his team on board with the back 4 and continued with it in the post-resumption matches, all to pretty good effect: they won 3, drew 4, and only lost against City, Liverpool, Spurs, and Watford. Generally speaking, they fared much better on the xG front with a back 4 than they had done previously, too.
Newcastle’s xGDifference per 90 of -0.15 over this 11 game spell (including a pasting by City!) would’ve been the 10th best in the league if they’d sustained it over a whole season. Sure, they had some soft end of season fixtures in here but they were basically a league average team when they played in a back four. And they did it with Dwight Gayle upfront. Swap Callum Wilson in for him and I think it’s entirely possible that they can replicate that level of performance this year.
So, depending on how much weight you want to put on those post-lockdown performances, things might be looking slightly better for Newcastle than advertised and this permanent shift to a back four might spell an upturn in fortunes for Bruce.
Things probably won’t be drastically different to the game we played against them in June, but there are a few personnel changes for Newcastle that’re worth mentioning.
Martin Dúbravka is out with an ankle injury and that’s a big loss for them — he stacks up well when it comes to the advanced goalkeeping metrics on fbref and, based purely on watching the two of them play, Karl Darlow represents a pretty steep drop off in quality. So that works in our favour.
Jamal Lewis has played in pre-season for Norwich and Northern Ireland, so there’s a chance he slots straight in instead of Manquillo at LB. Having a legit left footer there changes the dynamic on the left flank and potentially makes Jarrod Bowen’s life more difficult if he’s forced to track back frequently. Jeff Hendrick’s had some minutes in friendlies since joining on a free transfer, so he’ll probably be involved in some capacity, whereas fellow freebie Ryan Fraser hasn’t played any competitive football since March, so is unlikely to be ready for a while. Callum Wilson didn’t feature in any of Bournemouth’s pre-season games but supposedly he’s available to play on Saturday:
On our side of things, it’ll almost certainly be the team and shape we started with in the final friendly…
… but with Fredericks in for Ben Johnson and Rice in for Lanzini. Tomáš Souček is apparently available for selection, but he’s been self-isolating for the last week and it’s unclear how much training he’s done in that time, so Noble will most likely drop back from the number 10 role he played in the final few games of last season to a more familiar deeper position, with Haller joining Antonio as part of a front two.
We finished the Bournemouth shitshow playing 3–5–2, so there’s a slim chance that Moyes panics and goes with a similar shape to try and provide some defensive solidity. That’d probably look something like: Fabianski; Fredericks, Diop, Ogbonna, Cresswell, Masuaku; Rice, Noble, Fornals; Haller Antonio. I think that’s quite unlikely though.
The only time this direct 4–4–2 system has had a proper run out with two recognised strikers under Moyes was the 3–1 win over Southampton at home. That’s obviously a promising sign, but it’s questionable how well it’ll work against a side who are going to defend much deeper against us and be far less willing to press us high up the pitch.
The above graphic is from this Statsbomb season preview and there’s a section in that piece about Newcastle’s shortcomings from defensive set pieces:
It also doesn’t say much for his work on the training ground that Newcastle were genuinely bad at defending set pieces. Only two teams conceded more than their 13 goals from those situations, while their xG conceded of 16 was pretty comfortably the worst in the division. It wasn’t simply a case of Newcastle giving up a lot of set pieces, and consequently a lot of chances for opponents to create chances from them, due to their deep stance. They were about average in that, and anyway they were also the worst side in the league in terms of xG per set piece conceded.
That makes this game a bad one for Souček to potentially miss, although perhaps Haller can step up and use his aerial presence to capitalise on Newcastle’s frailty in these situations.
Our early fixtures are a horror show and it’s difficult to avoid the feeling that the onus is going to be on us to push for 3 points here. If we find ourselves in a scenario where we’re drawing fairly late in the game, then we could be in real trouble — this Newcastle side does have some weapons to hurt us on the counter, especially if Wilson comes on as an impact sub. Over-exerting ourselves to chase a win could easily spell disaster.
It’s a fool’s errand to try and establish where we’re at or how this campaign is going to pan out at this point. We looked sloppy, disorganised, and unfit against Bournemouth but that effectively means nothing.
While an encouraging performance would be nice, getting some points on the board here is vital. If we have to grind it out, so be it.
There’s a solid chance that Newcastle will be better than they’re made out to be. This is the easiest game in our early run-in but it’s going to be far from easy.
