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00:00Right, hello everybody, welcome to the Adam Cleary Football Channel.
00:03I'm just going to hit you with the big stats straight out of the gate.
00:06After 15 games in the Premier League this season, Newcastle United were 12th
00:10and questions were starting to get asked about Eddie Howe's suitability as manager.
00:15I remember them.
00:16What we're going to show you today is how at that point in the season,
00:19he changed the system, he altered the approach,
00:22and in the final 23 games that followed,
00:25only Liverpool got more points or scored more goals.
00:29So if you've ever found yourself wondering,
00:31is Eddie Howe really like an elite world-class manager?
00:35This is the video for you, because, uh, he is.
00:42Right, so Newcastle United fans, we need to cast your minds back two seasons ago.
00:46Do you remember this team? It's very similar to the current team.
00:50Intensity is their identity. That was the slogan.
00:54And it was characterised by Newcastle being probably the best high-pressing team in the Premier League.
01:01You just lost count of all the goals they scored in big games as well,
01:05where they took the ball off the opposition really high up the pitch and finished ruthlessly.
01:10But the season after that, where the team changed pretty much every single week,
01:14but apparently this was its most, uh, used 11.
01:17The build-up in fixtures and the mind-bending injury list meant that that intensity was now a liability.
01:25North Tyneside, Young Poet of the Air, 1997, and don't you ever forget it.
01:29But yes, anyway, now you lost count of all the goals they conceded,
01:33where they would give the ball away somewhere in the opposition half.
01:36And as a combination of the depleted legs they had because of all the games they were playing
01:41and the fact that Nick Pope was out, meaning that you could no longer have this really high line with Martin Dubravka
01:46and you ended up with these big gaps between the midfield and the defence,
01:50teams would just run through them and score from back to front really quickly.
01:54And that presented Eddie Howe with a really big problem,
01:57because he had to fundamentally change what Newcastle United were on the pitch.
02:02But you can't lose that intensity and aggression at the far end because it's your greatest weapon.
02:07You've got loads of players who press really, really well.
02:10But you did have to find a way to better control games to A, manage them, and B, manage the fitness levels.
02:17And of course, just to make that challenge even more fun,
02:20he has not made a signing in three consecutive transfer windows.
02:24They've lost Elliot Anderson, who was a guaranteed first teamer.
02:27And the one arrival they were going to get, Yacouba Minta, got diverted to Brighton,
02:33who are literally a close rival.
02:35So, fun.
02:37But just to make sure I'm getting my money's worth out with this graph,
02:41he absolutely did do that.
02:44He completely revolutionised the way this team played.
02:46And they went on a run that took them all the way into the Champions League
02:50and won a bloody trophy.
02:52And he did it by making this team's identity not intensity, but adaptability.
03:00They are now a team capable of being as aggressive and forward-thinking as they've ever been.
03:05They win the ball back in the final third and they score through structured high pressing.
03:10But they're also capable of being the most defensive, restrictive, absolute nightmare sides
03:17to try and play through in the division.
03:19They switch between both of these models, between games and literally in-games,
03:24regularly jumping from one sort of period of high pressing
03:28to another of having a really compact low block.
03:31And this is, without a shadow of a doubt,
03:33the most genius thing Eddie Howe has ever done at Newcastle United
03:37because it not only helps them to manage games,
03:40but it helps them to manage their players' workloads.
03:43And I'm going to show you now how he did it
03:45because it came in two very distinct stages.
03:48Stage one, I'm just going to use the title card again for this,
03:51Sandro Tenale.
03:53Believe it or not, and I mean, I say that's true, you can literally look it up,
03:57Newcastle United did not win a single league game that Sandro Tenale started
04:02until the middle of December.
04:05It feels scarcely believable to say that now,
04:08given he's just become the complete heartbeat of the side.
04:11But the problem was, the position in which they were using him,
04:13this sort of right-sided number eight,
04:16he was an awkward fit.
04:18He was a bit of a luxury there.
04:19There was a bit of a false narrative at this part of the season
04:21that Eddie Howe had this weird loyalty to Sean Longstaff,
04:25and as a result, he was too slow in replacing him with Tenale.
04:29But if you go back to that part of the season,
04:31said loyalty was actually just the performances and the numbers.
04:35And thus, more or less, every single time he started in this position,
04:38even when Newcastle looked good, they still looked quite unbalanced.
04:42Now, as to specifically why that is, I could do an entire other video on it,
04:46but the easy way to think about it, right,
04:48is that Tenale is a player who impacts the game directly.
04:52He wants to be on the ball, he wants to be winning tackles,
04:54he wants to be carrying up the pitch and all of that stuff,
04:57whereas Sean Longstaff is a player who impacts the game indirectly.
05:01He reads the game really well to fill in gaps,
05:03he pulls the opposition around to create space for others,
05:05he helps you get overloads in certain areas,
05:08and while, yeah, okay, you're right,
05:10that is kind of the football equivalent of that jazz joke from The Simpsons,
05:15you gotta listen to the notes he's not playing,
05:18it does work, because one is a player constantly making decisions
05:22and movements for the benefit of a system,
05:24and the other is a player who wants to be the system.
05:28And that's actually kind of just how they fixed it.
05:31They moved Sandro Tenale into the deeper number six position,
05:34so all of a sudden, yeah, you are going to be the system now,
05:38you are supposed to be involved in everything,
05:40both attack and defence,
05:41and you're even more central to sort of influence the play better.
05:45And as a consequence,
05:46switching the tactical load-bearing from Bruno to Tenale
05:50turned out to be a total masterstroke,
05:53because he's just become the perfect Premier League all-rounder.
05:57If you rank all the players in the league this season
05:59by the number of ball recoveries,
06:01which is the stat you kind of look at to see just how much are you getting around,
06:05how many times a game are you picking up a loose ball,
06:08because you're in the right position for it,
06:10both in attack and defence.
06:11It's a very good measure of distance covered.
06:13But yeah, anyway, if you rank every single player,
06:16he's 13th.
06:17It puts him in the top 10% for that,
06:20which is, I think, really good.
06:21But okay, okay,
06:22maybe 13th doesn't exactly blow your mind.
06:25But just take a second and look at all the players who are above him, right?
06:28With the exception of Bruno Fernandes,
06:31Tenale's six goals and three assists this season
06:33is nearly double the goal involvements of every other player
06:37who's doing this well at this particular thing.
06:39And then you look at something else entirely, right?
06:41The opposite of ball recoveries,
06:43passes into the penalty area.
06:45How much are you impacting the game in a tangible way
06:48at the very top end?
06:50And he's in the top 20% of the Premier League for this,
06:53which again, yeah, fair enough, all right?
06:54That's not going to blow your mind either.
06:56But if you have a look at, like,
06:57the 40 or so players who do this more often than he does,
07:02Erdegaard, De Bruyne, Saka, Palmer,
07:04Cunha, Maddison, Gibbs-White, Fernandes,
07:06nobody who is anywhere to be seen in the ball recovery staff.
07:11Admittedly, again, except for Bruno Fernandes,
07:15but he's played in about three or four different positions
07:17in the midfield for Man United this season.
07:19And more to the point,
07:20he's pretty much happy to do everything on his own
07:22because they've been so bad.
07:24So an exception that proves the rule there, I would say.
07:27And it's this sort of duality to his game
07:28that makes him the poster boy for this new level of adaptability.
07:32You look at his goal against Southampton, right?
07:34He isn't being overly cautious in that holding role.
07:37He's not sitting number six.
07:39He's so aggressive.
07:41He closes it down.
07:42He wins the ball back.
07:43But then he continues the run on
07:45because he recognises that the space has developed.
07:48He sees that they've caught Southampton on the hop.
07:50Can you name me another defensive midfielder
07:53who could score all of that?
07:57You cannot.
07:58But what this shift did for Bruno,
08:01crikey, bloody Moses.
08:04To game weeks 1 to 13,
08:06Tonali is not really in the team.
08:08He's had four starts.
08:09They're mostly sub-appearance.
08:10Bruno gets a solitary one assist
08:13and zero goals in that time.
08:15But then, game week 13 itself,
08:18Tonali finally starts.
08:20And Eddie begins to rotate between
08:22who's in the number six and who's in the number eight.
08:25You can see the idea has started to come to the four.
08:28And in those next 13 games,
08:29he gets three goals and five assists.
08:33If you compare Bruno's heat map
08:35from the 4-2 defeat to Brentford,
08:36which I remember watching,
08:38it was absolutely terrible.
08:39It's where Newcastle dropped to 12
08:40and you felt the whole season
08:41was getting away from them.
08:43If you look at his heat map from that game,
08:45you will see how easy teams were now finding it
08:47to bog him down in his own half.
08:50He was so important to how Newcastle played out.
08:52They were always looking for him on the ball.
08:54He virtually never managed to get himself
08:56into this channel where he really loves to be.
08:59But you compare this to the reverse fixture
09:01at St. James' Park against Brentford
09:03when they'd settled into Narnie being here
09:05and Bruno being there.
09:07That is a player able to offer you
09:09a completely different kind of contribution.
09:12He's still going to drop in.
09:13He's still going to get involved.
09:14He helps you beat the press.
09:15He's really useful here,
09:17but he is no longer tied down to it.
09:20Newcastle can get up the pitch much better
09:22and by extension, so can he.
09:25And now all of a sudden,
09:26you look at the passes he's able to make,
09:27the chances he's able to create,
09:29what he's able to do to influence the game
09:31where it matters most,
09:33that is a completely different player
09:35from the one we'd seen over the last sort of
09:37like year and a half leading up to it.
09:40The thing is, right,
09:42this shouldn't work.
09:45It definitely makes them better on the ball.
09:47And when you couple it with their high press
09:48and their intensity,
09:49it should create more chances
09:51and allow them to score more goals.
09:52But it also should make them
09:54much, much easier to play through.
09:57Because by taking Bruno's influence
09:59out of the centre of the pitch here,
10:01they're going to be a lot more open.
10:03So why then did almost all
10:05of their best defensive performances,
10:07and I'm just measuring this
10:08by how many chances they conceded,
10:11because it's the easiest way to do that,
10:13come after that magic 15th game
10:17and the system change?
10:18Well, stage number two,
10:20because as we've said,
10:22adaptability is their identity.
10:25In the second half of the League Cup
10:26semi-final against Arsenal,
10:28Eddie Howe did something
10:29he normally never does
10:31and radically, radically
10:33changed this shape.
10:34Newcastle kept dropping into a back five
10:37without the ball
10:38and just didn't bother pressing.
10:41They held their shape in that game,
10:42they sat really deep,
10:43they denied Arsenal any access
10:44to the middle of the pitch,
10:46even taking Isak off at one point
10:47and just going to a 5-5-0 formation.
10:51And Arsenal had zero idea what to do.
10:55And then, in the second leg,
10:56they did something else
10:57they almost never, ever do,
10:59and they set up with a back five
11:01from the very start
11:02and were very specific
11:04about when they chose to press.
11:07They, again, completely stifled Arsenal
11:08by denying them any access
11:10to the centre of the pitch,
11:11but also got a goal directly
11:13from one of the rare times
11:15they pressed them high.
11:16So, suddenly, this ability
11:18to go from sitting in so deep
11:20and clenching your arsehole
11:21so tight to physically become a vacuum
11:23to then sprinting out of your low block
11:25to flush your opposition's head
11:27down a shitty year nine toilet
11:29became Newcastle United.
11:32You saw it in the Carabao Cup final
11:33against Liverpool,
11:34harrying them only in very specific ways
11:37before locking the pitch down
11:38and forcing them to just aimlessly
11:40pump crosses into the box.
11:41They sat off against Manchester United
11:43for large parts
11:44to neutralise their threat in transition
11:46before suffocating them
11:48into just giving the ball away
11:49for one of the daftest goals
11:51you'll ever see.
11:51They even used it for large parts
11:53in the game against Chelsea
11:54where they had
11:54Dan Burton just shadow Cole Palmer
11:57around like he's the fucking Babadook.
11:59And, before his injury,
12:00it wasn't even unusual
12:01to see Joe Linton
12:02dropping into the left-back
12:04or left-centre-back areas
12:05in this system
12:06to add more aerial resistance
12:08to teams that would cross it.
12:10Not sprinting around after loose balls,
12:12not being classically Joe Linton
12:13in the middle of the park
12:14just fucking doosh.
12:16And this newfound flexibility
12:18achieves two very important things.
12:20Firstly, you can alter your system
12:21from game to game
12:22depending on the threat pose.
12:23But more importantly,
12:25the thing it fixes
12:26is injuries.
12:28Champions League football
12:29took an enormous toll
12:30on Newcastle last season
12:31to the point where they put
12:32this 11 out at one stage,
12:35such was the injuries
12:36and the tiredness
12:37and whatnot.
12:38But while the fixture congestion
12:39was a major problem,
12:41so too was the way they played
12:43and the way they trained.
12:44When your pool of players
12:45is shrinking by the week,
12:46asking them to constantly maintain
12:48this high-intensity,
12:50aggressive play style
12:51is borderline suicidal.
12:54Last season,
12:55Newcastle had 41
12:57separate injuries
12:58to members of the first team
13:00and had the highest number
13:01in the league
13:02of days lost through injury
13:04by over 200.
13:07They were missing players
13:08for an extra nine months,
13:10effectively,
13:10than any other team.
13:12And that doesn't even include
13:14Tenali's suspension.
13:15It's just injuries.
13:16So doing something
13:17about the absolute state
13:19of this
13:20had to be Newcastle's
13:21number one priority
13:23this season.
13:24So developing a system
13:25where you can tailor your approach
13:27so you're not always
13:29having to go all out
13:31is huge
13:32for injury prevention.
13:34And lo and behold,
13:35as a result,
13:36Newcastle only played
13:37three less games
13:39this season.
13:40I know there was no Europe
13:41but their cup runs
13:42meant they only played
13:42three less games
13:43without being in Europe
13:45but their injuries
13:46dropped from 41
13:47to just 17.
13:50And just the difference
13:51that makes over a season
13:52with only Botman and Hall
13:54being out for any
13:55real extended period of time,
13:56Bruno going
13:57ever-present
13:58and the injury-prone
14:00Alexander Isak
14:01starting 34 league games.
14:04Absolutely massive.
14:06Now, of course,
14:06there are a million
14:07other things
14:08across the course of the season
14:09I could also spend
14:10five, ten minutes
14:11going through
14:12so just to check them all off
14:14so you can't say
14:15I didn't realise
14:16or forgot.
14:16Dan Byrne playing
14:17the entire season
14:18at centre-back
14:19after the injury to Botman
14:20and being a friggin'
14:21colossus there.
14:22Jacob Murphy deciding
14:23to just be
14:24the £80 million
14:25right-sided forward
14:26they'd been crying out for.
14:28Hall and Liveramento
14:28both emerging
14:29to give way better options
14:31from the full-back areas.
14:32Joe Linton going up
14:33levels in combativeness
14:35yet again.
14:36Anthony Gordon having
14:37an incredibly weird season
14:39and Isak
14:39being the most complete
14:41finisher of chances
14:42in all of European football.
14:44I'm aware that
14:46all of those things
14:47did happen
14:47and they all indeed
14:48play a part
14:49but for me
14:50they're not as important
14:51as getting Tenali
14:52into that position
14:53and stopping everybody
14:55getting injured.
14:55So that's what the video
14:57is about.
14:57You can make your own.
14:58Anyway though
14:59they won a cup
15:00and they qualify
15:01for the Champions League
15:02which at this exact point
15:03of the season
15:04you would never
15:06in a million years
15:07have had the audacity
15:09to expect.
15:10And yeah here we are.
15:11Anyway though
15:12if you've enjoyed this
15:13and I mean
15:13Christ's fifth
15:14and a trophy
15:14you bloody well
15:15should have done
15:16please subscribe to us here
15:16at ACFC
15:18and we're going to stop
15:18doing that with my hands
15:19in a second.
15:20You can follow me
15:21across all the social medias
15:22at Adam Cleary
15:22C-L-E-R-Y
15:23and Jordan
15:24what did you make
15:26of the season?
15:26Did you have a nice time?
15:27Should they have maybe
15:28got a little bit higher?
15:29Were a bit lucky
15:29given the Man United results
15:31on the final day
15:32or do you finish
15:33where you damn well
15:34deserve to finish?
15:35Let me know it all
15:35down below
15:36I will read it
15:37with glee.
15:38But yes
15:39that's it
15:40Eddie Howe
15:40is categorically
15:42and undeniably
15:43one of the top managers
15:45in all of world football
15:47because he does stuff like
15:49because he's done
15:50something like this
15:51this miraculous
15:51in literally every single season
15:53he's been at
15:54Newcastle United.
15:55So let's put that
15:56argument to bed
15:57now shall we?
15:58Just like me
15:59because it's getting
16:00late now
16:00so I'm also
16:01going to go to bed.
16:03That was a weird ending
16:04goodbye.