As noted in a recent piece, Newcastle’s goal scoring & chance creation numbers are below “expectations” for the campaign. Surely not the fault of the Venezuelan Salomón Rondón, who is finishing ahead of his xG sums. Also, while Rafa Benítez is ultimately culpable for the team’s performance, the style in which Newcastle attacks isn’t vastly different from the previous campaign – long passes & counter-attacks remain the meat-and-potatoes of the approach.

Is it that the rest of the Premier League has improved while Newcastle has merely treaded water? Or have their been one or two (or three? Or four?) individuals whose performances have dipped?

Last season, NUFC Digital gauged the healthiness of Newcastle’s attack through the use of a “weighted” chances created statistic — comparing the chances that each player created against only the players that were similarly positioned.

That seemed to pass the eye test enough, but there was still an element of “noise”: not all clubs attacking the same manner. And thus, comparing the “10” of one club against that same position of another might not be enough context for judgement.

So, we decided to try something a little different for this. Using the method described down at the bottom of the article, all 20 Premier League clubs were separated into 4 distinct attacking archetypes.

Note: this clustering wasn’t intended to measure how good or bad clubs were at their particular styles. Rather, the intent was to merely group clubs by their tendencies & preferences.

From there, Newcastle’s attackers were then compared to their archetype brethren.

First, we’ll go over the broad archetypes, and then we’ll dive into the findings.