The problem with this pre-season as Eddie Howe names team to face Fiorentina

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Eddie Howe has picked his first Newcastle United side to take part in this weekend’s Sela Cup with two games in two days.

At the time of writing Eddie Howe‘s Newcastle side to face Fiorentina has just been announced and amongst the starters are Sven Botman, Kieran Trippier, Sandro Tonali, Anthony Gordon and Alexander Isak. It’s a pretty strong team, no question about that but with Martin Dubravka in goal, Alex Murphy, Matt Targett, Lewis Miley and Elliot Anderson all in the side, it’s arguably not the strongest team Howe could have chosen.

It’s evident then, that Howe is splitting his squad over the two games, both sides featuring a mix of first-team players and reserves, which is fine for a pre-season friendly, arguably it’s what they’re all about.

Howe hasn’t fielded anything resembling a first-choice Newcastle XI all summer

The problem is, in seven days time Newcastle are back at St James’ Park facing off against Aston Villa in the first Premier League game of the season and it’s very likely that Howe’s starting XI for that game will not have played together as a team all pre-season.

Of course they train with each other every day and they’re all professional enough that they should be able to play together regardless, but it just seems odd that Howe wouldn’t use at least one friendly to test out a potential starting XI so close to the league opener.

Howe has tinkered all summer and it’s gone well. We’ve seen Elliot Anderson stake a very strong claim for a place in that first starting XI. Lewis Miley has impressed Howe so much he’s automatically rejecting any loan offers as he wants to be a part of his development.

Howe obviously knows what he’s doing with his pre-season selections

We have new signings Sandro Tonali and Harvey Barnes who as yet haven’t played in anything even resembling a first-choice eleven.

I expect, in the case of Tonali at least, that their introduction to the starting eleven will be a slow build up anyway, but I just feel this weekend would have been a good time to show fans what our starting lineup may look like next week.

But hey, Eddie Howe is the professional here and I’m not one to second-guess his methods. This is why he gets paid the big bucks to make these calls while I set at a computer typing away on a keyboard.