How Newcastle United play: Tonali's vital role, picking when to press and the sweepiest of ‘keepers

New York Times

6 days ago

This is part of a series from The Athletic breaking down the tactical approach of Premier League teams for the 2025-26 season. You can read about the other teams we've covered so far via the links below.
In outlining how Newcastle have played under Eddie Howe, a certain wantaway Swedish centre-forward has been pivotal. The question mark over Alexander Isak's future means that, should he depart before September, Newcastle's overall game plan will need to alter.
But the overarching blueprint will not be discarded. Newcastle's head coach will not deviate from his defined principles — front-foot defending, aggression and high intensity are key traits of 'Howe-ball'.
Here, The Athletic breaks down Newcastle's approach under Howe — and the changes that may occur in the 2025-26 season.
Howe will hate reading this, but his team selection has been mostly predictable, at least in its formation.
For 113 matches straight from November 2021 to March 2024, Howe sent out his Newcastle side in a 4-3-3. Since then, any occasional deviation has always been followed by a reversion.
To the untrained eye, it may appear as if Howe sticks to the same tactical approach for every game. Yet meticulous planning means that there is always a nuanced plan — 4-3-3 is his nominal starting formation, but individual roles are tweaked depending on the opposition.
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Towards the end of 2024-25, Howe even shifted to a back three. That three-man defence was occasionally seen during pre-season but it is more likely that Howe will save that setup when facing European-qualification rivals. Sven Botman, Dan Burn and Fabian Schar have operated well as a trio, while defender Malick Thiaw, who last night completed his move from Milan, is adept at playing in any centre-back position.
The predominance of 4-3-3 is evident in the graphic below, which shows the average position of Newcastle's players during the 'build-up' and 'creation' phases.
During the creation phase — when a side builds out from the back — Newcastle try to use greater width, with the full-backs often closest to the touchlines and the wingers pushing outwards.
Once Newcastle advance into the creation phase — which starts once they have moved the ball into attacking areas — their shape narrows. The gaps between players close and the midfield three push to join the forwards, with Howe keen to flood the box with runners.
Newcastle are still evolving, especially in possession. Just as it will take time for the club to compete against the elite clubs within the bounds of profit and sustainability rules (PSR), their territorial dominance does not yet mirror the traditionally successful sides.
Whereas Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester City and Liverpool are dominant across the pitch, Newcastle's focus is directed towards wide attacking areas and then centrally inside their own half.
Athleticism and physicality are hallmarks of Howe's Newcastle. Energy and intensity are central, too.
In the Premier League last season, Newcastle players produced the most high-speed sprints per minute of build-up play.
Newcastle generated 8.6 xG (expected goals, a measure of the quality of their chances) from Opta-defined 'fast breaks', second only to Liverpool. The pace of Anthony Gordon, Harvey Barnes, Jacob Murphy, Tino Livramento and Isak — and the newly acquired speedster Anthony Elanga (who showed glimpses of what he can do against Atletico Madrid on Saturday, as shown below) — means Newcastle can attack with rapid ferocity.
Unsurprisingly, Newcastle ranked highly across Europe for overlapping and underlapping runs, as well as for runners attacking crosses, throughout 2024-25.
As the graphic below shows, Newcastle rarely build up laterally or by coming short — instead, there is a verticality about their approach.
They rely upon runners getting beyond the ball carrier, through underlapping or overlapping runs, or on players arriving late into the box to meet crosses.
Barnes and Livramento developed an understanding down the left last season and regularly overlapped and underlapped one another. Their connection led to Newcastle's second goal in the Carabao Cup final against Liverpool in March (shown below).
Newcastle have become adept at delivering open-play crosses to the back post. Last season, they scored the most goals (11) from these chances and generated the highest xG (11), from the third-most chances (38).
When one of Newcastle's wingers stays wide, the other tends to head into the area, ready to get on the end of crosses. Livramento, Lewis Hall and Kieran Trippier look to advance from full-back and pepper the area with crosses.
Great combination play, with Barnes and Livramento dovetailing once more, led to Murphy's back-post goal against Leicester in April (shown below).
As inverted left-wingers, Gordon and Barnes naturally cut inside onto their right foot. They regularly dart in from their flank, desperate to create an angle to shoot. As they do so, the full-backs overlap or underlap, presenting a passing option or attracting defenders away to create more space for the winger (as shown below against Brentford in April).
The graphic below shows how Newcastle entered the box across 2024-25.
Bruno Guimaraes (133), Murphy (128) and Gordon (109) provided the most passes into the area, while Gordon (47), Barnes (37) and Isak (33) carried the ball into the box most frequently. There is a fairly even split between passes and carries into the area from the right and the left, yet Newcastle rarely run with possession from central positions into the box.
Murphy developed a healthy knack for finding Isak in goalscoring positions last year. The winger laid on seven goals for the striker in 2024-25, the most provided for an individual team-mate in the Premier League. Whether that lethal combination continues moving forward, time will tell.
When it comes to attacking set pieces, Newcastle were decidedly mid-table last season. Only 17.7 per cent (12) of their 68 league goals came from dead-ball situations, while they generated an xG of 11.7 from 145 shots.
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Martin Mark's arrival as the club's first dedicated set-piece coach feels timely, then.
Jason Tindall, the assistant head coach, Stephen Purches, the first-team coach, and Kieran Taylor, the set-piece analyst, previously oversaw dead balls. While their involvement will continue, Mark specialised in set pieces at Midtjylland and his innovative ideas were already evident during pre-season, when Newcastle attempted new corner and free-kick routines.
Whether Mark alters Newcastle's throw-in blueprint will be intriguing to see. Last season, Newcastle only took one long throw, the fewest attempted in the Premier League, and even that was Dan Burn trying to quickly send his team clear down the wing, rather than a classic launch into the box.
In 2024-25, there were two very different versions of Newcastle: pre- and post-December. Or, to single out one specific tactical tweak, pre- and post-Sandro Tonali's shift to the deep-lying No 6 position.
As critical as Isak's successive 20-goal-plus Premier League campaigns have been, Tonali was arguably their most influential player once he had been repurposed.
During his first 18 months on Tyneside (when he was available to play, either side of his ban for gambling offences), Tonali usually operated as a right-sided No 8 (central midfielder). The graphic below shows how the areas in which he touched the ball in open play changed once he was moved to deep-lying midfielder for most of 2024-25.
Tonali is not an archetypal holding No 6, he is so much more. He can cover ground defensively, thwart potential counters and start attacks with his magnificent passing range, yet he also has the licence (and engine) to advance and create overloads around the box.
So much of what Newcastle did well en route to winning the Carabao Cup and qualifying for the Champions League stemmed directly from Tonali and the balance he provides.
When Newcastle qualified for the Champions League in 2022-23, they swarmed opponents — pressing high, forcing high turnovers and being aggressive in almost every off-the-ball phase.
That marked a dramatic change from the Rafa Benitez and Steve Bruce days, when Newcastle sat deep and tried to counter. Howe took over in November 2021 and focused on solidifying the defence. Across that first campaign, Newcastle's average defensive line was 22m from their own goal. The following season, when Newcastle finished fourth, their defensive line had moved 7m higher up the field to 29m.
That distance remained almost identical for 2023-24 (28m) yet rather surprisingly, it dropped to 25m last season (as shown below).
Dropping back slightly appears to be a deliberate evolution. Newcastle conceded 62 goals across 2023-24, but that was cut to 47 as they became far more rigid defensively.
Rather than press high all the time, Newcastle pick and choose their moments (and games). They did so late on against Manchester United in April, with six players positioned in the final third, leading to Guimaraes scoring.
Against some opponents, Newcastle will sit deeper. Against others, they will harry the goalkeeper and defenders whenever they pass it across the back line. In certain games, such as against Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal last season, Newcastle will go man-for-man and players will literally follow their opposite number wherever they roam. Usually, Newcastle switch between all of these (especially the first two) within matches.
Yet, even though Newcastle's defensive line has moved deeper, they are still reliant on Nick Pope's willingness and ability to come out of his box and involve himself in the game (as shown below against Crystal Palace in April).
Last season, Pope's figure of 2.4 sweeper-keeper actions per 90 minutes was the highest in the Premier League by a significant margin.
In December 2023, Pope was sidelined through injury and deputy Martin Dubravka is not as comfortable coming out of his box, exposing Newcastle's high defensive line. The decision to drop slightly deeper last season aimed to compensate for Newcastle's lack of pace at centre-back — although Thiaw's arrival should add speed to the back line, perhaps making Howe's side less reliant on Pope's sweeping.
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Aaron Ramsdale has arrived on an initial loan from Southampton and will compete with Pope. He made only 0.7 keeper-sweepings per 90 last season, so he offers different strengths, although that figure is skewed downwards by Southampton's out-of-possession style.
One of Ramsdale's strengths is his comfort with the ball at his feet. While Pope can distribute excellently out of hand, he often appears awkward when kicking from the floor.
Against Espanyol on Friday, Ramsdale often played simple passes, but always scanned the pitch and tried to break the lines when he could (as shown below).
In open play, Ramsdale went long more often than Pope (35 per cent to 16 per cent), as the graphic below illustrates.
Ramsdale does not just launch the ball, however — he gets involved in build-up play and looks to beat the first line of the opposition press by floating passes into the middle third of the pitch.
So we return to where we started.
It is difficult to say how efficiently Newcastle would continue to operate if Isak, the central goalscoring cog in their machine, was sold. That hypothetical scenario also depends upon who would replace him.
Newcastle failed to win any of their final six pre-season friendlies and have struggled for goals without Isak. He missed four Premier League matches last season, and Newcastle's record was not pretty — two draws and two defeats.
Howe is an astute and forward-thinking coach, however, and he will undoubtedly inject some fresh innovations into this Newcastle side.
(Top photos: Getty Images)
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