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Surprise Newcastle United star is the long pass success story against Man Utd

3 years ago
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Not many positives for Newcastle United on Saturday night.

Steve Bruce would claim Newcastle were unlucky that they reached 86 minutes with the score at 1-1 and got a 4-1 hammering instead of a point.

However, no rational person would think Newcastle were unlucky as Man Utd rained some 25 shots down on the Newcastle goal with 11 on target and Karl Darlow making a series of outstanding saves, including the Fernandes penalty.

The visitors then finally finding their ruthless touch and scoring three cracking goals in those final four minutes plus added time.

Jamaal Lascelles was really poor along with Emil Krafth, one of the few bright spots though was Federico Fernandez who as usual was Newcastle’s best defender.

Doing his best to hold things together as those alongside and in front of him crumbled.

Interesting to see a new stats report showing another positive for Federico Fernandez.

The table shows Premier League players with most accurate long passes in this latest round of PL fixtures and has been published by ‘The Other 14’ (who specialise in stats/tables etc on the 14 clubs who aren’t the ‘Big Six’):

Jonjo Shelvey missing from the list above and really, apart from the games where he gets the time and space and his long passing is on the mark, what else does he contribute in central midfield?

Leeds may have lost on Monday night but I watched their game against Wolves and I thought a lot of their play was outstanding and they were very unlucky to lose.

As you can see, they had three players on the list above including the top two spots and it wasn’t a case of them blasting long hopeful balls up the pitch in the Steve Bruce style. Instead they were like a continental side, knocking the ball about the pitch quickly and confidently with both short and long passing.

Everton as well featuring highly in this table, playing really good football with the likes of James Rodriguez knocking it about, even when they were up against Liverpool at the weekend.

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