Newcastle vs Bournemouth: two opposite ways to lose the ball

Saturday’s early kick-off at St James’ Park puts together two sides whose first two matches read almost as mirror images, and not in the way the table suggests. Newcastle are seventh with four points. Bournemouth are fourteenth with one. The football that produced those numbers was closer than the gap.

Newcastle drew 2-2 at home with Liverpool on the opening weekend and then won 2-0 at Tottenham. Bournemouth lost 2-1 at Manchester City and then drew 1-1 at home with Everton. Three of those four matches were decided by something other than which side controlled the game.

Newcastle are winning without the ball

At Tottenham last weekend Newcastle had 42.5% of the possession and eleven shots, two of them on target. Spurs had 57.5%, seventeen shots and six on target. Newcastle won 2-0.

Anthony Elanga scored on sixty-two minutes with a left-footed finish from the centre of the box, and Yoane Wissa added the second on seventy-two from the left side of the six-yard box. Two shots on target, two goals. That is not a repeatable rate, but it is a very clear statement about what this Newcastle side is currently good at: waiting, and then being ruthless in the ten minutes when the game opens up.

The Liverpool draw fits the same picture. Newcastle have taken four points from matches against a title contender and a top-six side, and they have done it without ever needing to dominate either.

Bournemouth are losing with it

Bournemouth’s problem is the inverse and it is a more frustrating one to carry. Against Everton they had 58.5% of the ball and seventeen shots, five on target. Alex Scott put them ahead on forty-one minutes, finishing right-footed from the centre of the box after an Evanilson pass.

They then held a one-goal lead for forty-nine minutes and conceded in the first minute of stoppage time, James Tarkowski turning in from the right side of the box following a corner. One point instead of three, from a match they had largely run.

At the Etihad on the opening weekend they had led Manchester City from the twenty-sixth minute and lost to goals in the eighty-fourth and the ninety-first. So Bournemouth have now been in front in both of their matches and have one point to show for it. That is not bad luck twice; that is a side that cannot close a game out.

The fixture itself

Kick-off is at 12:30 on Saturday, which is the slot that most often produces a flat match and occasionally produces a strange one. Newcastle have not lost at home this season. Bournemouth have not won anywhere.

The obvious reading is that Newcastle’s counter-attacking should find space against a side that wants to have the ball, which is the most straightforward version of this fixture. Elanga and Wissa both scoring from open play last weekend is exactly the profile that punishes a team committing numbers forward.

The less obvious reading is that Bournemouth have created more than any side in the bottom six and have been undone twice by the last twenty minutes rather than by the first seventy. If they lead here, the question is the same one they have already failed twice.

The two-goal habit

One detail worth holding on to: every goal Newcastle have scored this season has come after the sixtieth minute. Elanga on sixty-two and Wissa on seventy-two at Tottenham, and both of their goals against Liverpool arrived in the second half of that 2-2.

That is either a sign of a side that grows into matches and picks its moment, or a sign of a side that needs an hour to work out what it is doing. Against Bournemouth, whose two collapses have both come in the last ten minutes, it is a rather pointed thing to bring to St James’ Park.

What is actually at stake

Not much yet, in the sense that nothing in early September is decided. Rather more in the sense that a third match without a win would leave Bournemouth on one point from three, in the bottom five, with the fixture list about to get no kinder.

For Newcastle a win takes them to seven and, depending on the Saturday afternoon results, into the top four before Sunday. That is worth something in a division where the top four are currently separated by goal difference alone.

It is worth remembering how compressed this table still is. Four points separates seventh from second. A single Saturday can move a club five places in either direction, which is either an argument for taking the early rounds seriously or an argument for ignoring them entirely, depending on how your weekend goes.

If you want to see where this actually leads, the Premier League simulator on this site runs the real remaining fixture list from the current table — play out the season from here and see whether Bournemouth’s start is the anomaly it looks like or the beginning of something worse.