Yasir al-Rumayyan will not have to step very far from the front door of his magnificent Riyadh villa to encounter a chameleon. The kaleidoscopically coated members of the lizard family can be found almost everywhere across the Arabian peninsula and the wider Middle East but Newcastle’s chair probably did not expect to meet one at St James’ Park on Monday night.
Given Eddie Howe’s preference for wearing the same black club tracksuit at almost every opportunity he initially seems an unlikely northern European offshoot of the species. Yet in responding to a series of setbacks by, sometimes quite radically, adjusting his tactical colours, Newcastle’s manager has proved himself the cleverest of chameleons.
In the absence of their striking striker, Alexander Isak, Newcastle have taken one point from two games, at Aston Villa and at home to Liverpool, but those stumbles were much more about bad luck than Howe’s judgment.
It is not the manager’s fault that Isak’s enduring desperation to force a move to Anfield is understood to have left him resistant to an olive branch extended by Newcastle’s minority owner Jamie Reuben and representatives of the majority owners, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, when they met the Sweden forward in Northumberland on Monday afternoon.
Much as the T-shirts and hats on sale outside St James’ Park bearing the message “Isak is a rat” emphasised that the love affair between the Swede and Newcastle fans seems all but over, so too is Howe’s time as a football romantic.
A coach who, during his Bournemouth days, was regarded as far too wedded to an idealistic Kevin Keegan-esque dream of attacking purism to develop the pragmatism and defensive nous needed to reach the top is now fully adept at altering his strategic colours to suit differing tactical challenges.
Chameleons tend to turn darker when facing potential stress and this was how Howe’s team approached Mohamed Salah’s visit with Liverpool. The pair have history: the Egypt forward has scored or created 22 goals against Howe’s Bournemouth and now Newcastle, making him the player with the most goal contributions against a single manager in Premier League history.
Granted it was Salah’s cross that led to the 16-year-old Rio Ngumoha’s winner as, in the 11th minute of stoppage time, Arne Slot’s team secured a dramatic 3-2 victory, but the right-sided forward was otherwise well subdued by Howe’s blueprint. “I’m not sure if I saw a football match today,” reflected Slot, tellingly. “It was set piece after set piece, long throw after long throw. It was impossible for us to control this game.”
Had Anthony Gordon not been sent off for an unnecessary lunge into Virgil van Dijk late in the first half and the key midfielders Sandro Tonali and Joelinton not subsequently sustained worrying-looking respective shoulder and groin injuries, Newcastle might well have reprised March’s Carabao Cup triumph against Liverpool.
Significantly, Howe’s decision to deploy a barrage of long balls as his team turned unusually direct forced Liverpool into hurried clearances and left Salah and Cody Gakpo chasing a stream of aerial balls they were never going to control.
In refusing to risk passing out from the back, while ensuring Alisson was pressed into persistently kicking long, a tall, physical Newcastle ensured the ball was in play for only 40.8% of the contest.
That was the lowest percentage registered in a Premier League game since 2010 when Stoke and Blackburn recorded similar statistics as they traded broadly similar blows.
Howe may once have revelled in watching reruns of Keegan’s Newcastle entertainers and adored Arsenal’s passing and movement during Arsène Wenger’s Cesc Fàbregas era but he will not allow Newcastle to develop similar vulnerabilities.
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It explains why, despite an ongoing failure to sign at least one new striker, – although an improved bid for Jørgen Strand Larsen is expected to be considered seriously by the Wolves board this week – Newcastle’s appointment of Martin Mark as their new set-piece coach constituted an important piece of close-season recruitment.
Mark, who joined from Midtjylland in his native Denmark, has evidently been schooling Tino Livramento in the art of long throws and the England full-back’s missiles persistently unsettled Slot’s defence as Howe’s 10 men briefly drew level after falling 2-0 behind.
More of the same will be required at Leeds on Saturday when Gordon begins a three-game suspension and Tonali, Joelinton and the concussed Fabian Schär are expected to be sidelined.
“This isn’t going to be a simple season for us,” cautioned Howe as he awaits Thursday’s Champions League draw while hoping for a speedy resolution of the debilitating Isak saga.
Rumayyan and his fellow visitors from Saudi Arabia made a great show of racing down to the pitch to console their manager at the final whistle on Monday but they should arguably have arrived on Tyneside to resolve Isak’s future far earlier.
Howe is faced with the unpalatable prospect of the Saudis either refusing to sell the striker and leaving him stuck with an unwilling player or Newcastle receiving a record transfer fee from Liverpool too late to invest on the high-calibre replacement he desperately requires.
Small wonder that, on Monday, the 47-year-old reiterated he wanted only players “committed to Newcastle” and required swift “clarity” on Isak in order to “change the narrative”. After a summer spent somehow retaining his dignity and courtesy amid an unrelenting blizzard of striking forward-related inquiries at a club still seeking a chief executive and sporting director, Howe deserves much more than performative public hugs from Rumayyan.
