Interesting to look at a different angle with Newcastle United players and their opponents.
What dictates your chances of winning and losing.
With so many factors involved.
However, one of the key ones is laid out below.
How do the Newcastle United players match up on this front with their opponents?
These are the last thirteen Newcastle United matches in the Premier League and the distances covered in total by each team (all stats via BBC Sport):
Newcastle United players 116.91km and Chelsea players 108.91km
Newcastle United players 109.91km and Sunderland players 106.52km
Newcastle United players 114.04km and Burnley players 108.91km
Newcastle United players 112.30km and Spurs players 110.05km
Newcastle United players 116.39km and Everton players 111.74km
Newcastle United players 112.40km and Manchester City players 113.64km
Newcastle United players 111.01km and Brentford players 114.13km
Newcastle United players 116.85km and West Ham players 114.08km
Newcastle United players 114.50km and Fulham players 110.21km
Newcastle United players 115.16km and Brighton players 113.59km
Newcastle United players 109.45km and Forest players 106.43km
Newcastle United players 112.94km and Arsenal players 115.08km
Newcastle United players 113.23km and Bournemouth players 109.03km
As you can see, in ten of these last thirteen Premier League matches (BBC Sport previously didn’t show these stats of total distances covered for each match), Eddie Howe’s Newcastle United players comfortably outrunning the opposition, collectively covering more distance.
Indeed, Saturday’s performance by Newcastle United players showed the biggest gap of all thirteen games, with the Newcastle United players collectively covering exactly 8km more distance than Chelsea. This was also the highest total distance covered by the Newcastle United players in all of the games available to analyse on this front.
Workrate is the very least fans can expect.
In the three of the thirteen Premier League matches when the opposition covered more distance, two of those were against the two best possession sides in the division. Newcastle United forced into sitting in more against both Arsenal and Manchester City, thus lowering the distances the players covered to an extent. Against Man City there was a collective difference of just over a km anyway. Then against Brentford, Newcastle playing with one less player for a considerable time, after Burn sent off.
One of my pet hates is when NUFC fans accuse Newcastle United players of not trying. We may have had the odd one in the past but I honestly don’t see that with the Newcastle United squad Eddie Howe has.
For sure, at times Newcastle have players who don’t play well, or are lacking a bit of confidence, lacking form and so on.
However, I don’t think it is lack of effort.
Even the Sunderland game where I saw fans wanting to see it as lack of effort as a major factor in the defeat, I felt it was more a lack of inspiration and belief. When you consider the Newcastle United players collectively ran almost three and a half km further than the Sunderland players, I think that backs up the idea that it wasn’t lack of effort for NUFC.
Moving forward, I think that despite being cheated out of the win we deserved on Saturday against Chelsea, both by match officials and chance after chance missed by the Newcastle United players. The fact is that this was a game where Newcastle showed the most distance covered by the players so far this season, running all over Chelsea, the fact that Wissa and others are now offering better back up from the bench also plays into this, being able to keep the effort and pressure building. Keep up these levels and it will be good times ahead this season.