Rafa Benitez replaced Matt Ritchie with Christian Atsu less than 10 minutes into the second-half of Newcastle United’s weekend defeat.
The Hammers left St James’ Park with the three points as a brace from Javier Hernandez and a late goal from Felipe Anderson helped the visitors to a 3-0 win.
The scoreline arguably does not tell the full story however, with Newcastle having more attempts on goal than their opponents. And one of the reasons that the Magpies arguably stood a chance of scoring was the performance of Ritchie who put in a number of crosses while he was on the pitch.
Surprisingly however, Benitez decided to replace the Englishman with Atsu shortly after the break. It was a move that did not pay off – Atsu struggled to make any sort of impression – and appeared to annoy Ritchie.
And Le Tissier’s assessment of the decision certainly seems to suggest that he can completely see why the 29-year-old was not happy at the change.
“Atsu came on quite early on. I was really surprised at that substitution,” he told Sky Sports.
“I think it was still 1-0 at the time when he took Matt Ritchie off, and Matt Ritchie was fuming. He’d played quite a big part in that first half in creating chances for people. His delivery into the box is very, very good and I can certainly understand his frustrations.”
Although Ritchie is perhaps not enjoying his best run of form, he is the only player in Newcastle’s squad to provide more than one assist in the Premier League this season.
So replacing him when the Magpies were 1-0 down does appear to be an odd move, especially as he was already suspended for the next game after collecting his fifth yellow card of the campaign against the Irons.
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