Newcastle United are back to losing ways in the Premier League having slipped to defeat against Crystal Palace last night.
The Magpies were beaten 2-1 by Roy Hodgson’s side, with Jairo Riedewald and Gary Cahill cancelling out Jonjo Shelvey’s early strike.
Steve Bruce’s side were wasteful at St. James’ Park and could easily have come away from the game with a point, if not more.
It’s a hugely frustrating result given the great start, and takes some of the gloss off of the Everton win.
Shelvey’s goal was assisted by striker Callum Wilson, who was at the double against the Toffees on Saturday, and an alarming statistic has emerged in the aftermath of the game.
The England international has obviously been huge for Newcastle this season, but he’s now had 15 goal contributions (10 goals, five assists) for the club in the league.
Given Newcastle have only scored 22 goals in their 22 games, that means Wilson has been involved in 68% of the total tally (via WhoScored).
While that is obviously impressive on Wilson’s part, it also suggests that Newcastle are becoming overly reliant on the 28-year-old to make things happen.
Supporting cast must chip in
There’s no doubting Wilson – who is on at least £70,000-a-week at the club according to The Athletic – is the star of the team, but the man cannot do it all.
A goal involvement rate of almost 70% this far into the season is quite concerning in that, there is a suggestion that other attacking players aren’t pulling their weight, and everything has to go through Wilson if something is going to happen.
The likes of Miguel Almiron, Ryan Fraser and Allan Saint-Maximin all need to be adding goals and assists of their own.
There needs to be this notion that Newcastle will be OK should Wilson get injured at any point – because at the moment, any absence for the former Bournemouth could be disastrous.
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