Newcastle United star Kieran Trippier has warned Premier League rivals that the days of parking the bus are long gone on Tyneside.
From 2017 onwards, the narrative for the season was to reach 40 points and stave off the threat of relegation by deploying ultra defensive tactics. But Trippier's arrival at the club back in January resulted in a five-man defence being ditched and the flying full-back becoming one of the key men when encouraging attacking football.
Newcastle served a reminder of such tactics by sweeping Leicester aside after storming into a 3-0 lead after just 32 minutes to win the game.
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Trippier reflected: "In football, these things happen, you can't predict that. As always we want to start games on the front-foot and go toe to toe with teams. We have quality throughout our team. You see how we press, you see how we regain the ball but it is about being clinical in those moments and we were today."
The Toon full-back turned down a holiday after the World Cup finals in Qatar as he was keen to get stuck into the second half of the campaign with Newcastle.
Trippier said: "As players, you need to be professional about coming back and doing everything you can for your club. Obviously we wanted to go far in the World Cup but that didn't happen. We felt that it was important that me and the other boys came back straight away and got back into it because we have massive games coming up. Leicester and the Bournemouth cup game was massive."
Newcastle are now officially in the best for since the 1995/96 season in the Premier League. And no team other than Keegan's Entertainers have had more points after 15 matches. For Trippier though returning to domestic action was always going to be about regaining momentum. Before the World Cup break, Newcastle had won five on the spin, and the Leicester victory made it six.
The England defender said: "We know how big this season is going to be. Yes, we had a good first half of the season but we need to regain the momentum as quickly as possible. We have had a good few games before Leicester, but Leicester was always a massive game as we wanted to restart where we left off in the Premier League, it was a huge three points and now we focus on Leeds."
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