TLDR newcastle injury list can’t be an excuse due to multiple factors like form, chemistry, bad squad depth and most importantly how much the players who were injured/suspended had an impact on the team with Bruno G being a good example from last season however if you think I’m wrong then please educate this newcastle fan.
As you might have guessed I’m a newcastle fan and i’ll be talking about the question whether or not the injury crisis at newcastle is an excuse for the bad performance recently. As you might of known newcastle has been suffering a major injury crisis ever since our 1st encounter with Dortmund where we picked up most of our injuries but when the injury list is brought up it is usually labelled as an ‘excuse’ with varying opinions saying that our team is worth more money than Bournemouth and they also have injuries up to 7 players and yes while these claims are indeed true and not helped by the fact we were indeed piss poor today with Bournemouth absolutely deserving the win. What isn’t considered is the human body and I want to ask all of those who think the injury crisis is an excuse that can your team play a match every 3 days with practically the same players, they would be battered no matter how good they are. You’ll probably say what about the bench and that’s another thing, our squad depth is horrendous and you can tell from the bench because we’ve resorted to picking players whom haven’t even played in the premier league this season and we have no functioning striker at this moment in time with even academy players under the age of 19 were even given chances to play. Another thing to add was chemistry, we practically had half a team that had rarely or if not haven’t played with each other this entire season although not as a valid excuse.
The biggest reason for Newcastle’s deterioration of performance as of lately is how much the player who is injured or suspended had an impact on the team as for an example once Bruno g was suspended our team lacked any offensive capabilities and I think man city fans can agree with me here as once Rodri was suspended their team was never the same and they folded against wolves and arsenal whereas they likely would have won with Rodri in the squad.
If I am going to make a criticism of Howe’s team and how they have handled this season, then I would point out that he probably should have been working some of the younger and fringe players in earlier and trying to build a few more strategies that allow us to adapt. He doesn’t use his subs enough, IMO.
I think he probably realises this to an extent, he’s a young coach that has taken a huge shortcut to the elite level before anyone was ready for it, although I don’t think he really shoulders a lot of blame for what has been really really bad luck.
Some of the injuries are really odd like Murphy and his shoulder, Barnes and his toe, Anderson with glandular fever. Then there is the suspension of Tonali and Bruno… Add all those up and you’re going to get a bunch players forced to play more minutes, which results in more injuries… With multiple players out for months, we’re just a snowball rolling down a hill at the moment and it’s no wonder Trippier, Longstaff, and Schär look absolutely exhausted.
Now Eddie has to find a way to adapt, we can’t just accept defeat, that’s his job… But one away loss to Bournemouth in the league, and one to Dortmund in the UCL are hardly panic stations. Clubs are allowed to have bad performances, we have had them before, and we saw him change strategies. He now has to find a way out of this quick sand and he has an international break to do it.