First Half

Newcastle started out the game full of running and determination. What was particularly pleasing was the amount of bodies further up the pitch with all 6 of Muto, Ayoze, Kenedy, Ritchie, Shelvey and Diame seeing the ball aplenty in the final third.

Despite Man Utd having an extra man in the midfield (at the start of the game), Newcastle found passing options to the most advanced Newcastle players easy to come by.

By half-time, Newcastle had made 8 key passes to Man Utd’s 5. Critically though, Shelvey was responsible for 3 of those, whilst none of the midfielders for Man Utd had made even 1.

This, coupled with Newcastle’s 12 interceptions to Man Utd’s 1 by half time, suggested of the two sides’ approaches, Newcastle were getting more joy out of their passing (despite Man Utd making more overall).

Something different to note in the first half was the movement of Kenedy and Ritchie. Instead of staying wide they made runs beyond Muto and Ayoze on quite a few occasions to get into the box. On 20 minutes Ayoze had an effort from outside the area that De Gea comfortably dealt with, but waiting in the box for a chance were the two wingers.

Given that neither Ayoze or Muto boasts much height, this made sense. Rafa had planned for the fact neither would likely beat the centre backs in the air so changed the winger roles to accommodate.

What it shows is a nice variety to our attacking approach, for example all 3 of our goals at St James’ Park so far have been headers from crosses and by scoring through different tactics in this game it shows this team can avoid a tag of predictability (going forward) that should help in future games.

Defensively, Newcastle had to deal with 2 different approaches from Man Utd. Newcastle were comfortable in the early exchanges with Man Utd’s midfield. Mourinho made a tactical change on 18 minutes, bringing on Mata for Bailey and dropping McTominay into the centre back position.

Mata’s presence changed the defensive task. Whereas Newcastle could position themselves between 2 rigid midfield and attacking blocks before, the Man Utd number 8 was more likely to drift in between the lines and link play. Indeed, he made 1 key pass within minutes of coming on and was Man Utd’s 3rd most accurate passer.

There wasn’t too much pressure to deal with in the first half but Man Utd did have a couple of free headers from crosses, a sign of struggles to come in the 2nd half.