When Eddie Howe called Tuesday’s game against Barcelona the biggest game in Newcastle’s history, there was an underlying message to his players that went beyond what he actually said.
He is right that this game is one of the biggest for the club at international level. They have never been this far in the European Cup or the Champions League. But I would argue that the last two cup finals against Liverpool and Manchester United were bigger than this.
But really, I think he was trying to make sure that playing Barcelona at home didn’t get lost in the haziness of the big games at the moment.
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Lamine Yamal scored the winning goal for Barcelona at the weekend ahead of the match against Newcastle
I think Coach Howe wants his players to get a break this week and be fully focused on Tuesday night. He is well aware that the club was fighting on four fronts a few weeks ago, but now there is actually only one.
It’s unlikely they will reach the Champions League via the Premier League, so this is one way to get something tangible back from the season.
Playing three competitions in six days against Manchester United, Man City and now Barcelona at St James’s Park, followed by trips to Chelsea, Sunderland and Camp Nou can be exhausting.
We’ve never seen anything like this at Newcastle and we’re at the end of a grueling schedule with no free time in midweek since the November international break. As you probably know, no team has played more games in Europe’s top five leagues this season than Newcastle.
It was brutal, especially in the Champions League play-off finish. I’m sure some people would have liked to have just played Qarabag, but that was a 5,000 mile round trip. Given the choice, I think they would have chosen Monaco instead.
With those demands, it didn’t help that the jury was still out on summer signings apart from Malik Thiaw.
If all five of these guys had played and started their careers in earnest, we probably wouldn’t be talking about this series of games in the same way.
New players are struggling
Yoan Wissa has struggled since joining Newcastle in the summer.
Howe has had to rely primarily on last season’s squad, but with the addition of one or two others in Thiau, Jacob Ramsey has looked much better in recent weeks.
For a long time, Ramsey, Nick Woltemade, Ioan Wissa and Anthony Elanga haven’t contributed much.
There are various reasons for that. Woltemade and Wissa were panic buying at the end of the window when Alexander Isak was finally sent off. Woltemade feels his high-pressing style is not for him and is looking to reinvent the club-record £69m striker as a midfielder.
Regarding Wissa, there are mitigating factors. He was signed on deadline day and scored 19 goals last season. It was expected that he would be able to quickly join the team and score goals, but he was injured on international duty before he could kick a ball on the training pitch.
He doesn’t seem to have confidence in his body, he doesn’t seem to be completely over the injury, and I think there’s a feeling in his heart that he needs a full preseason.
Now, he’s been dealing with injuries that don’t help, but last week was the first time Newcastle won a Premier League game without him in the starting XI since he arrived in 2022. Having him out for several months at the end of the season will be a huge blow.
They’re obviously missing a few others. Lewis Miley was injured just as the gears clicked into place, while 35-year-old Kieran Trippier was forced to play every third day due to Tino Libramento’s injury.
Even Fabian Schaal was supposed to be brought in to give Thiau a few games off, but he’s been out for months.
Why top management mistakes hurt Newcastle
Newcastle are 12th in the Premier League
Around the club, there is a growing understanding of what Newcastle are facing with their schedule, the damage left by Issac’s situation last summer, how it has dragged on and the panic buying that followed.
Fans have complained, and feel some of this could have been avoided if Newcastle had been more prepared and organized last summer, but the lack of a chief executive and sporting director at the start of the season left the team in disarray, and it felt like mismanagement at the top.
This effectively left Mr Howe’s nephew Andy as the de facto sporting director. Everyone within the club felt he had done a good job under the circumstances, but there were plenty of doubts, at least in what was Newcastle’s busiest summer in a decade.
I thought these problems would be here to stay, and that’s what we’re seeing now.
We’ve seen with other players that Howe has signed players that it could take a full year to really settle in under him, but given the number of games Newcastle have to play this season, that’s not what they need.
It probably didn’t help that we got this far in the Carabao Cup, but you can’t take that competition lightly considering what winning last season meant for the club and the city, and they’re a good team so they made it to the semi-finals.
Ultimately we want to win these competitions and Newcastle have a better chance of achieving that than winning the Premier League, but we feel it will be difficult to achieve that on four fronts.
But on nights like the one at St James’s Park, when everything is on the line, they can rise to the occasion.
We’ve seen their performances in recent years, including a 4-1 win over PSG.
This season they were at the top of their game heading into the Champions League, with music playing throughout the stadium under the lights.
That will give coach Howe hope that they can get another good result on Tuesday and I think they need that. They have too much to do at the Camp Nou even with a loss or a draw, but with a win, even if it’s a narrow one, their season is still alive.
