Newcastle: 7 Problems Pardew Still Needs To Fix Before QPR

2. Tackling

Unsurprisingly, Daryl Janmaat is the most successful tackler on Newcastle's books. The fiery Dutchman has completed 25 tackles, and is growing with every game, making an average of 5 defensive actions every game. Unfortunately, that's only at a 51% success rate, so he's almost missing as many tackles as he's winning. That's a pretty similar tale for the entire team - other than Paul Dummett (at 62%), no Newcastle player has managed more than 60% success in tackles. Haidara comes in at 58% and Coloccini at 59% but Mike Williamson (45%) and Steven Taylor (33%) are considerably lower than where they ideally need to be. Through midfield, no player has a better rate than 50%, which is an issue when the tactics call for the other team to have a lot of possession. And when some are tackling at only 30% (like Moussa Sissoko) something has to give. The yellow cards picked up so far haven't been terrible but a number of players are coming up to the 5 yellow card suspension point, and improving their ability to tackle successfully will help that.