Newcastle United have quietly shaken off their tag of parking the bus from recent seasons under Eddie Howe. In United's first season back in the Premier League it was pretty much universally accepted that Rafa Benitez, due to financial constraints, didn't have much of an option other than to play with a five-man defence and wait patiently for opportunities on the counter-attack.
Benitez was starting to evolve in the club's second season in the top-flight in 2018/19 after signing Miguel Almiron and playing further up the pitch. Under Steve Bruce, the former Manchester United captain vowed to play "on the front-foot" on a balmy night in Edinburgh after beating Hibernian 3-1.
But by autumn, and after a 5-0 defeat at Leicester, Bruce told reporters that the squad had grown too accustomed to playing with a five-man defence and it was going to take time to get them to play more attacking football. This resulted in some heavy criticism for Bruce not least because he had almost £80million of attacking talent at his disposal in Allan Saint-Maximin, Joelinton and Almiron.
