Anthony Gordon struggled playing as a central striker at the start of the season, but with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see why the initial relocation of the England international did not work. The Alexander Isak saga was still playing out. Newcastle’s entire attacking operation was in a state of flux. The team-mates tasked with supplying Gordon had no real experience of playing behind someone whose previous outings alongside them had almost exclusively been as a winger. Then, of course, Gordon got himself sent off against Liverpool.
Wissa and Woltemade arrived, albeit with the former immediately ruled out because of a knee injury, and the Gordon experiment was hastily binned. Or at least it was until the end of last month.
With his attack misfiring, and Woltemade looking much better suited to a deeper-lying role than as the lead centre-forward, Eddie Howe repositioned Gordon again for the trip to Anfield. Newcastle lost, but Gordon scored and for most of the first half, the Magpies looked more threatening than in most of their previous league matches this season.
Since then, it has been onwards and upwards. Gordon boasts six goal involvements since Howe shook up his forward line against Liverpool, with his four-goal haul in Wednesday’s remarkable win over Qarabag rewriting Newcastle’s European record books and leaving him sandwiched between Kylian Mbappe and Harry Kane as the second-top scorer in this season’s Champions League.
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His attacking performances have been key contributors to a run of three successive away wins over Tottenham, Aston Villa and Qarabag that have transformed the narrative around Newcastle. As an added bonus, Woltemade also looks much happier, and a much better player, playing off Gordon’s shoulder rather than leading the line.
Of course, there will be matches where Gordon’s attacking qualities will not lend themselves so easily to playing as the ‘number nine’. At home, against opposition content to sit back and soak up pressure, Gordon might be much easier to neuter.
He suits the way Howe wants Newcastle to play though, with his energy and work-rate making him a much better leader of an aggressive high press than either Wissa or Woltemade. He wants to run in behind defenders, as evidenced by the succession of breaks that enabled him to repeatedly rip the Qarabag defence apart on Wednesday, and wants to drift around into the channels, creating pockets of space for the likes of Harvey Barnes or Anthony Elanga to exploit as they cut in from the flank.
Whether he is clinical enough to ever truly succeed as a lead centre-forward is open to debate, and there have undoubtedly been times during his career when Gordon has frozen in front of goal. That wasn’t the case on Wednesday though, when he scored via a clinical low finish and a composed dance around the goalkeeper as well as successfully converting two spot-kicks.
The row with Kieran Trippier that accompanied the second of those penalties briefly threatened to overshadow Gordon’s performance in Baku, but the two players ended the game as the best of friends and the incident only occurred because Gordon was thinking like a goalscorer, like Newcastle’s main man. Imagine if that had been Alan Shearer with the chance to score four goals in a Champions League game. Do you really think there’d have been any chance of him handing over the ball to a full-back?
Interestingly, in an interview after Wednesday’s game, Gordon spoke of how he would like to continue playing through the middle. ‘Don’t send me back to the wing,’ was the message he was delivering to Howe. As a player who has always seemed somewhat emotionally volatile, keeping Gordon happy and playing with a smile on his face is an important consideration.
The 24-year-old will also be thinking of the World Cup. He is a Thomas Tuchel favourite, with his place in the squad for the summer seemingly secure. There is a good chance he will be in the starting line-up for England’s opening group game against Croatia on the left of the attack, but an ability to act as a back-up to Kane is a decent addendum to any CV. Gordon, lest we forget, led the line when England Under-21s were crowned European champions.
Serendipity is described as ‘the occurrence and development of events by chance’. Howe had to do something as Newcastle’s attack failed to fire, and perhaps in desperation, he turned to Gordon. It might turn out to have been a masterstroke.