Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher has claimed that Newcastle United’s struggles against teams around them is a major worry for the side.
Much has been made of the Magpies having faced five of last season’s top six already this season, but they have also failed to beat teams like Cardiff and Brighton this term.
And that is Carragher’s worry: “The big problem is there have been games that Rafa Benitez and his squad will have looked at and thought ‘well we know it’s a difficult start’, but you look at Cardiff, Crystal Palace, Leicester, Brighton, forget the results they haven’t scored one goal in those games that you’d expect them to pick points up,” he told Sky Sports.
“You talk of the fixtures coming, nine fixtures where they don’t play any of the top six, OK, but they’ve had four of them already – they haven’t scored a goal.”
OPINION
Carragher makes perfect sense, here. Everyone has been lamenting Newcastle’s tough start to the season, and it has been a horrific run of fixtures, but they have had opportunities to win games against the likes of Cardiff and Palace. Like Carragher says, they haven’t scored a single goal in those games. It’s simply not good enough for a team like Newcastle to not even have scored against the four teams listed above. Obviously scoring goals and creating chances has been a major problem for Benitez’s side in general, but it’s bizarre that they’ve found the target against the top sides but not their rivals around them in the table. But these are the games that decide team’s seasons, not clashes with the top six, so for Newcastle to have faltered so badly is a big issue for the Magpies. There are winnable games coming up for the club, but their struggles against their bottom half rivals is a real worry for Benitez.
