The Newcastle United team were collectively poor last night but Jermaine Jenas highlighted what one man in particular did that was poor on Match of the Day.
After the defeats to Manchester City and Liverpool there were plenty of positives to pick out, but other than Callum Wilson‘s late goal for Newcastle there were very few if any from the 3-1 defeat to Brighton.
There were, however, plenty of negatives to point out and that’s exactly what former Newcastle midfielder Jermaine Jenas did on Match of the Day last night.
Newcastle really missed Sven Botman against Brighton
Newcastle’s rock solid defensive partnership of Fabian Schar and Sven Botman has been broken up due to an injury to the latter. Dan Burn was brough into the centre of the defence and Matt Targett was reinstated to left-back.
For some reason that partnership between Burn and Schar didn’t work at all. Not helped by the fact that the midfield in front of them had no interest in helping them out. The lack of defensive cover from the midfield was never more evident than for Evan Ferguson‘s second goal where Burn had to pick up two players and by making the choice to follow one, left a nice gap for Ferguson to exploit.
However, it was Fabian Schar who caught the ire of Jermaine Jenas who said on Match of the Day: “This is just horrendous defending. There’s five players around Ferguson, watch this from Schar. He just hangs out a leg, that’s not good enough for a centre-half in any team in the Premier League that kind of hanging out a leg to block a shot is poor.”
It wasn’t just Fabian Schar who phoned in their performance
The thing is, that laziness was a constant theme throughout the game. Sandro Tonali‘s lazy clearance that led to the first goal is a prime example. The leg flick that barley altered the trajectory of the ball was bad enough, but then Tonali just watched on as a Brighton player helped himself to the ball instead of closing him down.
With just Sven Botman missing from what seems to be Eddie Howe‘s preferred line up it seems that removing Botman is akin to pulling out the wrong Jenga block.
Who knew we were a one-man team all this time?
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