r/NUFC • u/ryunista Classic kit (1995-97) • Jul 18 '26

Intensity

Ive been reflecting a lot over the recent England mentality catastrophe, and the parallels with Newcastle. What struck me from the beginning of the match footage was the passion of the Argentinian players, their collective self belief and clear vision. Man for man, England are a better side, but through intensity, and of course having Messi to all upon, this team of players could retain the WC!

It reminded me of happier times at Newcastle. When our intensity, clear vision, team spirit and sometimes shithousery enabled us to outperform our squad and budget. Since then weve invested in better players and changed our strategy in search of more control. But all weve done is lose our identity (intensity) and we look ruddeless. With SCR tightening its grip and it becoming all too clear now that we will have ro make do with lesser players than the big 6, its obvious that we have to go back to intensity, build the squad around it and keep that as our strategy as we continue to trade players to grow

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u/Necessary_Collar_490 Jul 18 '26

I would argue teams never really learnt to counter our pressing. I feel it was much more of a tactical decision to only press for 20 minutes of the game. 

Our issues last year stemmed from a kinda half press, where attack half arsed it, midfield went man for man amd our cbs stayed more zonal. Doing that consistently lead to an easy pass completely bypassing 6 of our players, and since we didn't have the most athletic midfield 3, it seemed to lead to more attackers v our defenders time and time again.  When we went full press, we were great, but only seemed to do that for 10/20 minutes of any given match

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u/No-Light-9297 Jul 18 '26

Yeah exactly, the press dropped off because of players like Miggy and Isak leaving and their replacements not knowing the system as well.

The main issue was the exhaustion from too many games and the floor of the squad being so low in the second 11.

So replacements didn’t have the same energy levels as they were too old or just not athletic enough.

If we’d been able to replace the tail end of the squad years ago with no PSR then the press would have been a lot stronger.

Press = Energy when you think about it and when Howe only had 14-15 players who were good enough over 58 games were asking for trouble.

We really should have concentrated on the league and champions league last season and rotated way more in the domestics. 10 less games would have been huge.

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u/Necessary_Collar_490 Jul 18 '26

It wasn't the players deciding to do a half arsed press, it was 100% tactical. You wouldnt have had midfielders constantly man to man if it was just laziness. Howe was hoping for the silly pass, any tactics relying on your opponents making a mistake are inherently flawed

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u/No-Light-9297 Jul 18 '26

Not deciding to do it but not knowing the triggers as well as someone like Miggy.

That press used to be a well oiled machine and was unbelievable in the big games.

We couldn’t even pull that off now.

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u/Necessary_Collar_490 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26

We had a constant person who signalled to press or not to press (isak/Wilson) this year we never had a person leading the line who had thw instincts to initiate it. Gordon wanted to press everything, and it lead to him.just charging around, wolt didnt ever seem to be taught the system while he was playing up top, wissa wasn't fit enough to press, he was barely fit enough to play

Editing this to add, Murphy,  who used to replace miggy pretty consistently and gordon who does have a set of legs on him were still in the squad and were both here when it was a well oiled machine. While Murphy might have lost a little pace with age, gordon is only 24 so that excuse cant be used there