Newcastle: Leicester Win Shouldn't Paper Over Cracks

One swallow does not a summer make.

It's the hope that really kills you. In the wake of Newcastle's uninspiring but very welcome defeat of Leicester City, the talk will inevitably focus on turned corners, new beginnings and moving up the league. Before too long someone will mention the fact that Pardew "master-minded" the victory and that the team proved they were doing all they could to win for him. It is all painfully inevitable. But anyone thinking that the result yesterday is indication of any longer-term success is deluding themselves at the minute. The win was far from definitive, and were it not for some desperate defending and the interference of the woodwork, Leicester could quite easily have snatched two points away. The enduring truth is that Newcastle are still far from fixed, even with 7 points on the board and the top half of the table just 3 more away. The squad remains too small - if it wasn't yesterday's winner Obertan wouldn't have played at all - the tactical choices of the manager remain wayward, and the specific development of individual talents remains wayward to say the least. The important thing to take from the victory against the Foxes is that it was very much only a start. It showed some pointers to how to win games - not isolating the striker, playing Haidara over Dummett and not counter-attacking against team that should be counted as inferior - but it also showed how far away the team are from making victory a regular thing. Pardew must continue to work closely with his squad, and he must learn from the issues that the past eight games have thrown up in a far more substantial way than he did even for the Leicester win. Improvement is still required - focus even more so, and the coaching team need to make sure that they employ the skills and tactics that have been responsible for Newcastle's best play to greater effect. And most of all, Newcastle need to have the confidence to play their own game: stop containing the opposition and allowing their tactics to define ours and the rewards might be as good as they were in 2011/12.
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