15 Things We Learned From Newcastle Vs. Portland Timbers 2

2. Steve McClaren's Newcastle Have One Attacking Move - They Need To Shake Things Up

Here is how Steve McClaren's Newcastle play football. It NEVER changes: The keeper has the ball. The full backs push out wide and the centre backs split. The keeper rolls the ball to either centre back or full back. They then pass it to the nearest available central midfielder. The ball then heads out wide. Some trickery in wide areas sees United get in behind. A low drilled cross is easily dealt with and Newcastle start again. And repeat... We're not bemoaning the fact that the new head coach is trying to get his team playing good football. We're merely questioning why when it wasn't working for the majority of the night in Portland, as well as Sacramento, that the former England boss wasn't trying something different? As we mentioned before, United largely have inferior players compared to the rest of the Premier League so they are going to have to be more cunning in order to break teams down. The can't do that by plugging away at the same routine when it clearly isn't going to work...