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Game number 56 of Newcastle United’s season and their 36th in the Premier League. Mercifully, this draining, marathon campaign is almost over. Worryingly, it appears destined to end with Eddie Howe still scrambling for attacking balance, still struggling to piece together his offensive jigsaw, and still unable to extract the most from Newcastle’s £64 million ($87.2 million) club-record signing.
Longer term, Nick Woltemade may yet prove to be the answer—a vocal section of the fanbase certainly believes he is—but right now he encapsulates Newcastle’s broader attacking flaws. What Woltemade is, where he fits in, and how he will succeed on Tyneside all remain unclear. If anything, we have actually moved further away from being able to answer those questions. So much uncertainty hangs over Newcastle heading into the summer. Whether Woltemade is a critical part of a radical solution or a misfit stylistically who will never be suited to “Howe-ball”—if the head coach even remains at the club—is a call that still needs to be made.
Nick Woltemade played a little over an hour at the City Ground (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)
The evidence so far suggests that, unless Howe deviates significantly from his present approach or actively recruits players who can complement Woltemade’s technical qualities, the 24-year-old is not the lone centre-forward who can lead the line in a 4-3-3. None of Woltemade’s last 14 top-flight starts, stretching back to January 18, have been as a striker. Instead, he has been deployed as a makeshift No. 8—unfairly, some argue, and to limited effect—or left on the bench, with only four starts across the previous 13 Premier League games. His last two top-flight starts, against Sunderland in March and Sunday’s 1-1 draw at Nottingham Forest, have been as a second striker. Woltemade looks more comfortable picking up the ball in the pocket, able to turn and play in his teammates, rather than receiving possession with his back to goal as a centre-forward.
But it is not as if Woltemade has made an incontrovertible case for Howe to persist with him as a No. 10. That is harsh on Woltemade because he has not been afforded a long enough run there to really exert influence, yet the same lack of game-defining interventions which saw him dropped as a striker (once the goals dried up following a flurry of seven in his first 14 Premier League games) remains in that deeper position.
Eddie Howe was left frustrated at the end (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
Woltemade, as always, delivered some lovely moments at the City Ground—a strong run and pass to play in Will Osula who should have scored, a delicious ball to release Jacob Murphy on the wing, and a lung-busting recovery run to dispossess Dilane Bakwa on the edge of the Newcastle box—but there were once again too few in the final third. During his 61 minutes on the pitch, the German did not manage a shot, created two opportunities (one defined by Opta as a “big chance”), and had only 21 touches. Of those, just two were in the opposition box, the same as Yoane Wissa enjoyed during his 19-minute cameo.
“For Nick, it was one of a handful of times he’s played that role for us from the start with Will, and they haven’t played together too much,” Howe told reporters afterwards. “I thought there were some promising bits. We probably didn’t get him involved as much as we wanted to. Certainly, technically, we need to see his best qualities, to see him on the ball. Second half, we did really well as a team, we improved and became more of a goal threat as the game went on.” Whether that final sentence represented a critique of Woltemade, praise of the attacking replacements, or a mixture of both is something fans will likely interpret differently.
