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Rafa Benitez claims Newcastle United have been ‘unlucky’ this season – What’s the truth?

5 years ago
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Rafa Benitez has been asked if Newcastle have been unlucky and deserved more points than they have now.

The Magpies sitting with six points from 11 matches, thanks to the win against Watford, three draws, plus the seven defeats.

So what is the truth?

This is what Rafa Benitez had to say and then below that I have reviewed each of Newcastle’s 11 games and tried to be as even-handed as possible.

Rafa Benitez:

“Some of the games we deserved more.

“We were unlucky to miss the penalty at Cardiff and the penalty should have been given against Man United.

“Now we have three points and hopefully we can carry on against Bournemouth.”

Newcastle 1 Tottenham 2

A good second half including hitting the bar and Kenedy wasting a one on one with the Spurs keeper, Newcastle ended up with same number of shots (15) as the visitors. Deserved a draw.

Cardiff 0 Newcastle 0

Newcastle showed so little ambition against a clearly poor team. Kenedy could have won it with the late penalty but the goalless scoreline was a fair reflection of the play.

Newcastle 1 Chelsea 2

The penalty decision could have gone either way but Newcastle deserved to lose this one, did so little going forward.

Man City 2 Newcastle 1

A spirited performance but the end result couldn’t be argued with.

Newcastle 1 Arsenal 2

Had a decent go in the first half but result reflected the game.

Palace 0 Newcastle 0

Newcastle did ok first half but shocking after the break. Defended quite well but marginally deserved to lose.

Newcastle 0 Leicester 2

Poor defending for the second goal and a modern day penalty gifting the first for Leicester, the ball blasted at Yedlin’s arm from a yard away. No complaints with this result.

Man Utd 3 Newcastle 2

Rafa points to the penalty Newcastle should have had and that’s true but Man Utd then should have had one when Muto handled. So purely on events that did happen, they evened themselves out. Man Utd had so many chances as the game progressed I don’t think you can claim Newcastle deserved to win but I think a point was deserved.

Newcastle 0 Brighton 1

Brighton so negative and scored with a deflection, pretty much their only chance of the game. Newcastle had 27 shots and a handful of those were decent efforts, a game Newcastle deserved to have won.

Southampton 0 Newcastle 0

When you don’t have a single effort on target then what do you deserve? A good battling display in defence but Southampton should have won as they produced enough chances to. Newcastle definitely got away with this one and didn’t really deserve anything.

Newcastle 1 Watford 0

If you claim Newcastle deserved to beat Brighton, then you have to accept Watford should have comfortably won this one. They deserved to be two or three up at the break and have the game won, though obviously Rafa’s players deserve credit for battling away and taking their chance. Overall though, the visitors deserved the three points on the play overall.

By my reckoning, Newcastle deserved their draw at Cardiff but on overall play deserved to lose to Watford, Southampton and Palace. Which means only one of their six points that Newcastle have got was ‘deserved’ .

On a more positive note, I think Newcastle did deserve to beat Brighton and also get a point against both Man Utd and Tottenham.

So by my calculations, Newcastle have ended up with how many points they deserve, only not necessarily from the matches where they did end up picking points.

When Rafa says Newcastle were ‘unlucky to miss the penalty at Cardiff’, it wasn’t really unlucky was it. It was a shocker from Kenedy but in terms of the overall match it would have been a smash and grab for the Magpies to have got a win.
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