1. Alan Pardew still has the dressing room
Pardew may be a long way from winning over the Toon Army but should he keep his job then he has every chance of turning Newcastle’s fortunes. Any professional manager can win back fans with good results and performances, but it is very hard to win back the dressing room after losing it.
Fortunately for Pardew, Newcastle’s players were clearly behind their manager in terms of performance and desire to get a result. They kept a high tempo throughout the first-half, their forward players covered a lot of ground and worked hard to return to their defensive shape. With more quality in the final-third and at the back, they could have won the game so Pardew’s future may be in doubt but he definitely still has the players grafting for him.
2. Stoke City are getting the best out of Victor Moses
Moses showed a lot of potential during his time at Wigan Athletic and he gave it a go at the big clubs, Chelsea and Liverpool, but it didn’t really work for him. Now, at Stoke City, he is really proving his worth again. He already has two assists this season after managing only over a season before.
That is mainly because of the way Stoke City play. In the first half, Moses was unplayable because the Potters defended their half allowing him to take on defenders with a lot of space behind them. When Stoke pushed their play into the attacking, Moses’ influence dropped a bit as he had little space in which to use his pace. Fortunately, Stoke seem happy to play on the break this season, so Moses should have a brilliant campaign.
3. Newcastle need natural playmaker
Newcastle had to ask Cheick Tiote to operate as a deep-lying playmaker with the other four midfielders working as attacking midfielders ahead of him when they had the ball. They worked hard to get something from the game and Jack Colback was really impressive in the way he dropped into central midfield and pushed forward to attack.
They enjoyed a lot of possession but they still forced Asmir Begovic into making just one save in the first-half because they did not have a quality playmaker to create good chances for them to score. Tiote and Colback are excellent at stealing possession, covering a lot of ground and protecting the back four but they need a natural playmaker to feed the ball to. It remains to be seen in Remy Cabella can grow into that role.
4. Mark Hughes has his own Gael Clichy/Aleksandar Kolarov situation
Marc Muniesa got the nod ahead of Erik Pieters at left-back for Stoke. Hughes mentioned before the game that Muniesa would start because of his contribution in his last outing in the Capital One Cup Cup. The young full-back showed real quality in possession, he read the game well with some timely interceptions but he is comparatively not as powerful and defensively solid as Pieters.
Manuel Pellegrini has a similar situation with Kolarov and Clichy, where he usually picks Kolarov in games he needs more offensively and Clichy in the ones that demand more defensively. Given that Hughes has two decent left-backs, he could end up with the same privilege as the season goes on.
5. Newcastle needed to tailor their corner kicks against Stoke
In general, Newcastle played very well but they should have known better when taking corner kicks against a tall Stoke City side. More than half of their corner kicks were hit in the orthodox way and Stoke City easily dealt with all of them. The only time Newcastle threatened to cause real problems with corner kicks was when they tried the clever ones, yet they rarely used them.
