Eddie Howe kept flicking switches and pressing buttons but the power refused to do anything more than blink sporadically into life before swiftly fading once more. Newcastle had slipped to 12th in the Premier League and, with José Mourinho said to be on friendly terms with the Saudi Arabian-owned club’s chair, Yasir al-Rumayyan, Howe’s hold on the manager’s job looked to have loosened slightly.
Then Sandro Tonali turned the lights back on and everything changed. A month after Howe decided to deploy the Italy midfielder in a deep-lying No6 role in a 1-1 draw at Crystal Palace, Newcastle have risen to fifth. With Champions League qualification suddenly back on the agenda, they travel to Old Trafford for Monday night’s match against Manchester United having scored 11 goals while keeping a trio of clean sheets in their past three league games.
In the seven matches since Howe told Bruno Guimarães to vacate his preferred No 6 brief and shift forward into a No 8 position that had failed to showcase properly Tonali’s match-shaping qualities, Newcastle have lost only once. Perhaps not coincidentally, that league defeat, at Brentford, came on a day when Howe opted to rotate and started with the former Milan playmaker on the bench.
When Newcastle finished fourth in 2022-23, they played the sort of high-intensity pressing game that frequently blew opponents away but demanded that feet needed to remain rammed to the accelerator for unfeasibly long periods. Ultimately, Howe’s injury-ravaged team seemed to burn out and limped towards a seventh-place finish last season.
That campaign coincided with Tonali’s 10-month suspension for breaches of Italian betting regulations but now a 24-year-old coveted by both Juventus and his old Milanese employers is making up for lost time by slowing things down and dictating the tempo whenever Newcastle look in peril of losing control.
For all their strengths, Howe’s team were not always that good at taking charge of matches but now they possess a holding midfielder who, while refusing to rush things, has actually speeded up their passing considerably thanks to some impressive one-touch control.
Apart from his varied passing range and ability to contribute the odd goal, Tonali rarely loses possession, is a specialist at stealing the ball with immaculately timed interceptions and seldom needs to make full-blooded tackles. Above all, he marries athleticism with the vision and technical ability reminiscent of a certain former Italy playmaker.
“There are definite links to Andrea Pirlo in Sandro’s game – and it’s not just the hair,” says Howe. “Sandro’s got similar qualities in terms of technique and passing. But the things that set him apart for me are his tactical intelligence and athleticism. Defensively, he uses those attributes to track players, nick balls and put out fires. One of his best qualities is that he doesn’t give possession away too much. He’s been excellent.”
If he is often likened to Pirlo, Tonali possesses a significantly more powerful engine and bears strong comparisons with one of Newcastle’s finest midfielders of recent decades: England’s Rob Lee. Like the often underrated Lee in the 1990s, Tonali brings out the best in teammates, particularly Guimarães, the vastly improved left-back Lewis Hall and Alexander Isak. His choreography has helped Newcastle develop a more varied, hybrid playing style melding bouts of that old heavy metal pressing with more melodious periods of rhythmic one- and two-touch passing.
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This evolution leaves Isak aiming to add to his recent tally of seven goals in five league games as his teammates hope to reaffirm their revived Champions League ambitions at Old Trafford, a ground where Newcastle have won only one league game since 1972. Not that Howe is getting carried away. “There’s an opportunity,” he agrees after it is suggested the door to Europe’s showpiece competition has been flung wide open. “This year seems unpredictable in the Premier League. You never quite know what will happen but the challenge for us is to become consistent. We’ll try to grab that opportunity if we can.”
Newcastle’s next three fixtures – at United and Tottenham then, in the Carabao Cup semi-final first leg, Arsenal – should offer a decent litmus test of Newcastle’s potential. “We’re going into a run of games that will be a deciding factor in where we finish the season,” says Howe as he suggests he is unlikely to rotate Tonali again any time soon.
“Early season there was chopping and changing because I wasn’t liking what I was seeing,” says a manager who admits that behind the scenes “issues” with “unsettled” players had threatened to derail Newcastle’s campaign and appears somewhat relieved that, rather than upsetting Guimarães, the Brazil midfielder’s relocation looks to have rekindled his commitment. “I carried on chopping and changing and there was a vicious circle. But now the team’s picking itself to an extent.”
Howe is braced for a Football Association club charge of failing to control their players after an unseemly 20-man altercation in the tunnel as Newcastle beat Aston Villa 3-0 in a fractious Boxing Day encounter. A hefty fine beckons but at least Tonali’s reassuring authority dictates that fears of an eruption of tactical anarchy in the visiting midfield at Old Trafford have receded appreciably.
