Newcastle United lost 2-0 away at Arsenal last night.
Pundits Andy Cole and Jamie Carragher have told Sky Sports (02/04, 10:17pm) that they were a little disappointed with Newcastle United’s in ability to test the Arsenal defence on Monday night.
The Magpies made the long trip down from Tyneside to North London last night, with Rafael Benitez hoping to give fellow Spaniard Unai Emery a difficult night at St James’ Park.
However, Arsenal eased to victory in the end, taking a first half lead through departing midfielder Aaron Ramsey, as his angled strike inside the area clipped the post and went in.
Newcastle managed to keep themselves in the game without looking particularly threatening, and Alexandre Lacazette’s deft lob over Martin Dubravka late on sealed a 2-0 win for the Gunners.
The stats don’t read too well for Newcastle after this one. They had just 29% of possession, managed three shots on goal and only one shot on target in 90 minutes, only winning two corners too.
Arsenal dominated the game, as they’d have expected to, but Newcastle didn’t pose enough of a threat at the other end, with Bernd Leno in the Arsenal goal having one of his most trouble-free nights yet.
After the game, former Magpies striker Cole noted that he expected Newcastle to test Leno more, even if Benitez doesn’t have a big-money striker at his disposal to make his side more of a threat.
Carragher added that the game went pretty much as he expected, in the sense of Newcastle sitting back and attempting to make the game difficult, as it’s the recipe for Benitez keeping the club in the Premier League – but he would like to see them being more adventurous going forward.
“I’d expect them to work the goalkeeper a little bit more,” said Cole. “Regardless of if you want to spend £50m, £60m, £75m on a striker, you’ve got to try and work the goalkeeper with the players you have, and they’ve not done that this evening.”
“[It was] exactly how I thought it would probably be. We looked at the start, Rafa’s got a formula for keeping Newcastle in the Premier League, and that means making it very difficult for the opposition, which then makes it maybe difficult for them to go up the other end and score goals. As he said, he possibly hasn’t got the players at the other end of the pitch, but I agree with Andy; at times when you watch Newcastle, you’d like to see them be a bit more adventurous. It’s a formula that won’t take them down, they’ll be middle of the table and that’s what they’ll continue to do,” added Carragher.
Receive exclusive football transfer news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
