‘I was very surprised’… Ian Wright was shocked at what Newcastle did during the first half against Chelsea

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Ian Wright was left shocked with the way Newcastle United had played during the first half against Chelsea.

Newcastle looked to play high up the pitch at Stamford Bridge on Monday night as they tried to take the game to Chelsea, but the hosts were quick in transition and punished the Magpies when the made a mistake.

Speaking on Sky Sports for the game, Wright was surprised that Newcastle weren’t operating in a low block and looking to hit Chelsea on the counter which they have been so good at this season.

Wright shocked at Newcastle’s approach vs Chelsea

As proven against Wolves, Newcastle are at their best when they can hit teams on the break with the pace of Alexander Isak, Anthony Gordon and Miguel Almiron absolutely key in their attack.

However, with the way Eddie Howe had set the team up against Chelsea, Newcastle needed more creativeness from the midfield and that’s something they’ve been severely lacking all season.

Chelsea actually played them at their own game and were able to hit Newcastle on the counter a number of times, and the visitors really struggled to deal with it all night as Sven Botman and Martin Dubravka in particular looked completely out of sorts.

Surely now Howe must look at the Wolves game and try to emulate that for future games as the season starts to draw to a close in the next couple of months.

On Newcastle, Wright said: “When you look at how Newcastle were pressing them, which I was very surprised at, I thought they were going to start low block, you can see that there’s not a lot of intensity in it. It looks very easy. One pass and Cole Palmer is in and he has a lot of time on the ball.”

Newcastle struggling to find any consistency this season

Last year Newcastle massively overperformed with the players that were available to them, but they were also quite lucky on the injury front with not many key players missing out for extended periods of time.

This season, however, has been the complete opposite of that and it has massively impacted the way they have performed on the pitch with the players struggling to find a consistent run of form.

So many have been moving in and out of the team in the last few months and against Chelsea it was once again clear that there’s a disjointedness in the team.

Now, Newcastle look like they’re heading for a mid table finish in the Premier League unless they can find a decent run of form in the final nine games and make what would have to be a huge push for Europe.