This is the lead cause of Newcastle United ills | OneFootball

So, another blank day at the office then.

We have to look at the barefaced facts and ask what is our major malfunction, the answer is simple and obvious… not scoring enough goals this season.

This problem is little or no fault of manager Eddie Howe. This lies with scouting and recruitment, as I firmly believe that Howe will have known our Achilles Heel in such an area and will have surely made the concern prominent in transfer discussions.

We have only scored more than one goal twice so far this season in all ten games played. On those two occasions, they were late-ish winners against Spurs and Wolves. We even required penalties to get through both cup games against Nottingham Forest AND Wimbledon.

After the Everton no score draw, I wrote an article advocating signing Dominic Calvert-Lewin in January as a possible solution to our problems. Some agreed, some disagreed. That article’s point will prove ever more poignant with each passing game if they turn out like Saturday.

We can look at the first choice midfield trio of Bruno, Tonali and Joelinton and ask if it’s working or not? It seemed pretty good to me against Brighton but less so in other games. Which one would you drop in any case? Personally, I prefer the industry of Sean Longstaff or Joe Willock in there, but I understand I’m in a minority.

Is our over reliance on Anthony Gordon starting on the left holding us back? It shouldn’t be but I fear it’s partially true. What I do know is we need to get Harvey Barnes starting games. You wouldn’t have had a Laurent Robert or a David Ginola on the bench as impact players, simply to bring on against tiring legs would you?

Scoring goals is our main problem and it SHOULDN’T be. How can a side with Alexander Isak, Callum Wilson, Anthony Gordon, Harvey Barnes, Sandro Tonali and Bruno Guimaraes have issues finding goals? And it’s in that group where the problem appears. Or should I say DOESN’T appear.

Last season we had massive injury problems yet we still scored goals. Isak and Wilson shared the load. Indeed, if you count the times when they were BOTH fit, they were substituted for each other on quite a few occasions. One would start (usually Isak) and then the other would “finish the job” so to speak.

We were fortunate last season that if Wilson was unavailable, Isak was fit, and vice versa. This season, that luck has deserted us and it was entirely predictable and should have been solved in the transfer window. Not pursuing some extortionately priced centre back from a club so obviously desperate to fleece us for most of said window, would have been nice.

You, me, the 52,000 who turn up, the dog, the cat and the bucket and spade could have told the club that relying on the fitness of Callum Wilson was a risk not worth taking and that it would come back to bite. It’s a shame as I love the player.

I’ll give you a comparison.

Ask any Newcastle fan over 30 who is the best defender they’ve seen at the club in the last 40 years. I’d like to bet the vast majority would name Jonathan Woodgate. For me, he’s head and shoulders above any other defender in my time supporting the club. The only problem was he was always bloody injured. That we managed to sell him to Real Madrid while injured, for a substantial profit, was remarkable. Yet his injuries never let up. I don’t think he played a game for the Spaniards for a year after his move.

Now I’m not suggesting that we’re going to get much, if anything, for Callum Wilson but last summer the same sense of timing with the Woodgate sale should have been applied to the Wilson situation. Time was up.

We can all sit back and say “When Wilson is fit, we’ll be ok” but here we are ten games and over two months into a season and the player still hasn’t been sighted. The chances of Wilson making the same number of appearances that the aforementioned Calvert-Lewin already has this season (8) by Christmas is almost an impossibility.

I’ve remarked repeatedly that our home form last season was to blame for our failure to qualify for Europe and despite others saying it was the away form, I’ll stand by my assertion. We failed to beat Nottingham Forest, Man City, Luton, Bournemouth, Brighton, and Everton at home last season. Wilson missed 4/6, Isak missed 2/6. Both were missing for the Bournemouth draw. You can say it’s fine margins over a point here and a point there and you’d be right, it’s exactly that.

Crucially, this season looks to be going in much the same way. We’ve missed Isak for three games so far and picked up two points against Man City at home and Everton away. Including Wimbledon at home, it’s three games where neither of our strikers have been available out of just ten games. Where we would be if we’d had our number 9 to take over from our number 14 in those games or the others, is open for you all to speculate. I remarked to a friend that the situation couldn’t be allowed to continue, yet here we are.

The two concerns I have? Obviously, the worry is if Isak picks up another knock. The other issue still remains. When will Wilson be back and for how long.

Yesterday it was crying out for another quality striker to come on and take over from Isak, or partner him up front. That the young William Osula is unfancied is understandable but that matter doesn’t solve our lack of goal threat and subsequent 0-1 defeat. Just giving him stoppage time to save the day was hardly helpful either.

I’ve made a big deal of both our home form being the problem AND bettering our results on the same fixtures last season. Yesterday was another example of it not panning out for the better, for that was a point less than what we got in the same fixture last season. That’s regression and not the progression I’d had in mind during the summer.

It’s not the time to panic but it’s a long way until January where we can do anything about the situation. And once again I’ll state, it makes any potential deal for Calvert-Lewin look VERY attractive to me, £15m could solve the situation.

To rely on one class striker (with his own injury concerns) to carry all the load, over a perennially injured other one and a young untested player, is ridiculous, when the situation was there for all to see for months and months.

The long and short of it?

It’s not a right winger, not a centre back, a defensive midfielder or a multitude of goalkeepers that was needed as prime concern. Our failure to source a credible striker last summer and move on from a problem that was always going to be there, is the lead cause of our current ills.