There are plenty of barometers of the Premier League’s strength. One of the more ridiculous is to say the sixth-best team in Europe are only the 14th finest in England. It can be a quirk of autumnal tables: with trips to Marseille and Paris Saint-Germain to come, Newcastle may not finish sixth in the initial phase of the Champions League, even if an Aston Villa-style surge to the quarter-finals does not seem utterly implausible. Nor, in all probability, will a side who finished fifth in England last season end up quite as low. There are precedents for their initial stumbles: Newcastle were 12th in early December in 2024. They showed a slow start can be no impediment to Champions League qualification.
And yet these are unusually troubled times on Tyneside. Newcastle could cite the fixture list, with six away games in their first 11, with the two home defeats to last season’s top two, each coming cruelly late in injury time after spirited showings. Yet more recent memories are of strangely supine performances at West Ham and Brentford, twice leading and yet losing 3-1. They beat Athletic Bilbao in between and have booked another Carabao Cup quarter-final place but it has nevertheless entered the ranks of the worrying starts.
