2020-21 Season Review

Toontalk's official review of Newcastle's Premier League Season

#FullTime #MatchReport #EndOfSeasonReview #StatAttack

Apologies for the delay, but as promised here is a statistical breakdown of our season, based on the Match Reports that I have been putting together since Match Day 1.

Average scores explained:

Every player starts each game on 6.00 with positives and negatives during their performance allowing the score to fluctuate accordingly before a final score is rounded to the nearest whole number.

Based on this scoring system, I would consider the following to be true of a mean average score across the season:

> 7.00 = Excellent 6.50 - 6.99 = Very Good 6.00 - 6.49 = Decent 5.50 - 5.99 = Not Good 5.00 - 5.49 = Poor < 5.00 = Shockingly Shit.

PLEASE NOTE: I only considered players who had made at least 10 league appearances in this analysis, thus DeAndre Yedlin (6) and Matty Longstaff (5) were not included. Also, cup games of any sort were not used, this is a purely PL based analysis.

Top 10 best performing players:

1 - Martin Dubravka 7.31 2 - Karl Darlow 7.08 3 - Joe Willock 7.07 4= - Allan Saint-Maximin 6.92 4= - Callum Wilson 6.92 6 - Miguel Almiron 6.76 7 - Matt Ritchie 6.56 8= - Paul Dummett 6.50 8= - Jacob Murphy 6.50 10 - Isaac Hayden 6.38

Honestly, I found very little of this Top 10 surprising, as I would consider all of the above to have had 'good' seasons. The fact that the top three (and the only players averaging >7.00) consists of both our goalkeepers and a loan player is probably testament to what was, on the whole, a very trying season for NUFC.

Top 10 worst performing players:

1 - Jeff Hendrick 4.95 2 - Emil Krafth 5.33 3 - Jamal Lewis 5.58 4 - Jonjo Shelvey 5.63 5 - Sean Longstaff 5.65 6 - Joelinton 5.77 7 - Dwight Gayle 5.78 8 - Andy Carroll 5.89 9 - Javier Manquillo 5.92 10 - Fabian Schär 5.94

Again, very little of this shocked me, except perhaps the inclusion of Schär as, on the whole, I consider him one of our better performers. However, his score was obviously influenced by his red card vs Arsenal and his diabolical vs Aston Villa.

Schär apart, I don't think anyone would be too bothered by any of these 10 moving on this summer, and that says it all really.

Incidentally, the four players whose scores fell between the top and bottom performers were:

Ciaran Clark - 6.23 Federico Fernandez - 6.21 Ryan Fraser - 6.11 Jamaal Lascelles - 5.95

I guess what surprises me a little here is that Clark and Fernandez were missing from the top 10 and Lascelles and particularly Fraser were not in the bottom 10.

#MOTM awards:

As I'm sure you're aware, unless our performance was absolutely dire, I always gave out a NUFC MOTM for each game. Here are the results, showing every player who received at least one MOTM award, with the amount they received in brackets.

1 - Miguel Almiron (10) 2 - Karl Darlow (6) 3= - Allan Saint-Maximin (4) 3= - Callum Wilson (4) 4 - Ciaran Clark (3) 5= - Martin Dubravka, Fabian Schär, Andy Carroll, Jonjo Shelvey, Isaac Hayden, Fede Fernandez, Jacob Murphy, Joe Willock (1)

Miggy is obviously the clear winner here! Although I was initially surprised by this, a vast majority of his awards came when he was 'the best of a bad bunch' or in other words, the team lost/ were poor and his outstanding workrate saw him score higher than his peers. Other surprises for me were that Clark got three awards despite not being in the top 10 performers and that Willock and Dubravka only got one award each despite being two of the top three performers.

Obviously, Match Ratings and MOTM awards are down to my personal opinion throughout the season, but I'll finish with some fact based statistics, that I feel are worthy of comment.

Top goal scorers:

1 - Callum Wilson (12) 2 - Joe Willock (8) 3= - Joelinton (4) 3= - Allan Saint-Maximin (4) 3= - Miguel Almiron (4) 6= - Jacob Murphy (2) 6= - Jamaal Lascelles (2) 6= - Jeff Hendrick (2) 9= - Ciaran Clark, Paul Dummett, Fabian Schär, Andy Carroll, Jonjo Shelvey, Dwight Gayle, Emil Krafth (1)

Obviously, this is appalling. Without Wilson and Willock providing the fire power, we would 100% have been relegated. 4 goals is not really enough from our supposed starting forwards and to see that Carroll and Gayle only managed one goal each speaks volumes for their lack of impact over the season. Ritchie, Hayden, Fraser and Longstaff all failed to find the net on a single occasion, despite making EIGHTY appearances between them! With Willock back at Arsenal, we NEED to invest in a goalscorer for next season; Wilson cannot do it all on his own.

Top 10 appearance makers:

(Substitute appearances are given in brackets)

1 - Miguel Almiron 33 (6) 2 - Joelinton 30 (7) 3 - Jonjo Shelvey 30 (1) 4 - Jacob Murphy 26 (9) 5 - Callum Wilson 26 (3) 6 - Allan Saint-Maximin 25 (6) 7 - Karl Darlow 25 (0) 8 - Jamal Lewis 24 (4) 9 - Isaac Hayden 24 (2) 10 - Federico Fernandes 24 (0)

These statistics shocked me more than any others. Bruce has been peddling the unavailability of Wilson, Almiron and ASM all season long, yet here it is in black and white that they make up three of the top six appearance makers for the season! Proof that the excuses Bruce has been using simply aren't true.

I was also surprised to see Jamal Lewis on this list as it has felt like he has been out of the team for a long time now, as has Isaac Hayden. Finally, to see Darlow on 25 appearances (12 more than Dubravka) was also a shock as it seems like our No.1 has been between the sticks for a fair while now.

Aaaaaand... that's it! Season done and dusted! Thanks for all the support along the way. If there are any other stats that I may have kept that didn't make it into this post, that you might be after (most sub appearances, rating in a specific match etc) then please ask away in the comments and I'll dig them out for you.

Until next season my friends... HTL

Ross Macdonald