Newcastle United recorded their first win of the Premier League season on Saturday. It was much needed, but performances over the opening four matches have been positive.
Eddie Howe will reflect on the opening matches and feel like his team hasn’t been rewarded with the points they deserve.
The most impressive part to our game has been the defence. Howe has trusted experience in the first few weeks, with four of his back five being older than 30. It has worked though, as Newcastle have had one of the best defences in the league.
Three teams have conceded fewer goals than us, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Nick Pope has kept three clean sheets out of a possible four, which underlines how good we have been without the ball. There have been moments where he has been called into action, but it is the underlying numbers that point to the defensive quality of the team.
Some people raise their eyebrows at expected goals (xG). In football, the stat is here to stay and it does add plenty of value to analysis. Newcastle have the lowest xG conceded in the Premier League with 2.1. Arsenal are the next best with 2.4 conceded and they have regularly been regarded as the best defence in the league in recent seasons.
To put this simply, it means that we have conceded chances of lower quality than the rest of the league. Although it is a small sample size, we have had a tough schedule. We have faced two of last season’s top six, as well as facing a difficult away game against newly promoted Leeds United.
It would be useful to compare the same fixtures from last season to see the defensive improvement. As we didn’t play Leeds, I will remove that game from the comparison. In the corresponding fixtures last season (Villa – A, Liverpool – H and Wolves – H), we conceded 5.7 xG.
This season, we conceded 1.4 xG. That is a stark improvement and underlines the defensive improvement we have shown.
Further to the expected goals data, we are managing to restrict our opposition to a limited number of shots. Our opponents have had a total of 26 shots in the four matches. No team has conceded fewer, with Liverpool the next lowest with 34.
It isn’t just the low number of shots we are conceding that is notable, it is also the quality. We used the xG conceded data above, but when you dig further into the data, it is encouraging. The average xG total of a shot we are conceding is 0.08. Only Arsenal have a lower average with 0.06.
Is there a reason for this improvement?
Due to the sample size, it would be foolish to draw hard conclusions from this data. It is encouraging, but we need to see this performance level over a longer period before getting too excited.
However, we can draw some conclusions from it. The biggest reason for this improvement could be the addition of high-level competition for the defensive places. Kieran Trippier and Tino Livramento have Lewis Hall pushing them for game time. Dan Burn is trying to keep a fit-again Sven Botman out of the team. Meanwhile**,** signings Aaron Ramsdale and Malick Thiaw have added fresh competition.
Competition is healthy for a squad and we are seeing the benefits in our defensive performance this season.
A more speculative point would be that this could be a tactical change from Howe. In our last European campaign, we suffered from fatigue and an injury crisis. Our style of play is intense and chaotic, which puts a huge physical load on the squad.
Lessons will have been learned from two seasons ago and we need to be more streetwise. Howe may want his team to manage games better and play at a lower intensity, with the knowledge that there are gears to go through if we need them.
Top teams don’t play at full throttle in every match. It would be unwise to and I think Howe learned that the hard way two seasons ago. This tactical switch to be more controlled in our style may have led to a significant defensive improvement.
Stats taken from fbref (powered by Opta)