Premier League spectators are lucky compared to those who visit French and Spanish stadiums: according to a study by the Lausanne Football Observatory, the actual playing time in a match played in England (56.5% of 90 minutes and additional time) is indeed higher than that of matches played in France (56.1%) and Spain (55.8%). And let’s not talk about the dunces that are the Scottish Premiership (52.7%) and, dead last in this class, the Primeira Liga, where the ball only lives a little more than half the time.
There are, however, exceptions; and we had a big one on Tuesday, when Newcastle went for a draw – and for once, the expression is to be taken literally – at Arsenal. The effective playing time of this 0-0 just exceeded 51%; which means that we only played 48 minutes and 44 seconds of the 95 that had been allocated by a referee, Andy Madley, whose evening was not the most comfortable. We will not dwell on those of his decisions which made Mikel Arteta lose his calm in his technical zone – and outside it – namely two penalties refused to his Gunners for a shirt pulling accompanied by a tackle on the person of Gabriel in the Magpies area, as well as a hand from Jacob Murphy in his eighteen meters at the end of the game.
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Credit: Getty Images
Newcastle is Simeone’s Atlético
More than these more questionable game facts than “scandaleux” (the adjective used by the Arsenal manager) is how Eddie Howe’s side managed to leave the Emirates with a point and a fourth clean sheet consecutive in the English championship which must hold the attention. If the qualities, the verve and the imagination of the Gunners of 2022/23 are not unlike those of previous incarnations, Wengerian in this case, the foundations on which these Magpies have built their astonishing rise are absolutely nothing common with the principles that had inhabited their ancestors in the days of Kevin Keegan and Bobby Robson.
Newcastle would have happily accepted that we played even less than those 48 minutes and 44 seconds, marred by countless tactical fouls, injuries that weren’t obvious, and an epidemic of cramps that seemed to bring down anything that wore a black-and-white jersey at the end of the game, while Arsenal knocked harder and harder on the door and seemed very close to breaking it down. If there was one team that Newcastle brought to mind, it wasn’t that of Ginola, Les Ferdinand and Faustino Asprilla. It was Diego Simeone’s Atlético de Madrid, the big bad wolf of European football of the last decade, which also happens to be the club where Newcastle went to pick up their current captain, Kieran Trippier.
Eddie Howe
Credit: Getty Images
124 million euros for a metamorphosis
We can take this as a compliment. In terms of their defensive organization and the aggressiveness of their players in recovering the ball and reducing the space available to the opponent, Newcastle are today the best – most effective, in all case – in the Premier League. A record of eleven goals conceded in 18 matches bears witness to this: 0.6 goals per game, which, by the way, happens to be roughly the pace at which Simeone’s Atletico were walking when they won the Spanish title in 2013 /14 and 2020/21. The statistical similarity does not end there: Newcastle’s attack is running at 1.77 goals per game this season; in 2020/21, the pace of that of colcheneros was 1.76.
The way in which Howe managed to turn what was the sixth most porous defense in the Premier League last year into the most difficult to break through today is therefore to be commended, although the recruitment of Trippier, Botman, Pope, Burn and Guimaraes (in other words, five of the seven defensive-minded players who appeared on Tuesday’s scoresheet, all arriving at the club in 2022) also have something to do with it. Let’s say that the Tyneside club got their money’s worth: 124 million euros just for this quintet.
But what are not that the players who have changed. It is also their attitude. Just look at the transformation of Joelinton, a clumsy striker, into a midfielder who embodies the sense of sacrifice that Howe knew how to instill in his entire squad – and also became a master of what the British call the dark artsthose “shadow arts” of football, the aim of which is not to create, but to destroy, by going to the end of what is permissible on a football field, by going even beyond, by testing the patience and rigor of the referees like no other club in England.
Kieran Trippier
Credit: Getty Images
Can England forgive?
Every time an Arsenal player touched the ball in midfield, two or three of his opponents immediately attacked him. That in itself is admirable. What was less so was that whenever possible, the ankles of the player in red received those sneaky little taps that are so hard for a referee to detect in the flow of play. A cold viewing of the images of the match left no doubt as to how systematic this ‘rough’ approach was. Diego Simeone would have applauded this recital.
Newcastle weren’t at their first attempt at the Emirates and did even better – even worse – at Anfield on August 31, when there were eleven second-half stoppages, all due to physical problems whose cause was mysterious but who, each time, had seen a Magpie lying on the lawn and crying out for care. The referee of the day, André Marriner, had not been fooled, and had granted eight minutes of additional time, the last of which Fabio Carvalho had scored the goal of 2-1 for the Reds.
The question now is whether the credit, even the complacency, which Eddie Howe has long enjoyed with the British media will not run out faster than expected. He is no longer the boyish-faced young English manager who took Bournemouth from the fourth to the first division (backed, it is true, by a very generous Russian owner). He is the coach of a Top 4 team, the ambassador of the Saudi project in England, and, in a short time, in Europe, a role in which we also feel uncomfortable.
England easily forgive too much roughness in contact when the perpetrator doesn’t really have any other way to compete. They were Sam Allardyce’s Bolton, Tony Pulis’ Stoke, Sean Dyche’s Burnley. The Crazy Gang’s Wimbledon. But this Newcastle is quite different. This Newcastle aims to become champion of England and Europe in the next five years. What, in Bolton, Stoke or Burnley, could pass for a choice imposed by the more modest resources of these clubs, the only way they could obtain good results against much richer than them, is nothing other than cynicism when the culprit is, potentially, the richest club in the world.
And richer than Simeone’s Atletico who had to find a way to bring down the moguls of Real and Barcelona.
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