Newcastle United complete first season guide

Thanks for coming to read another edition of how to manage a Premier League club in the first season on FM24. What we do with this series of guides is to take over an EPL and play a season with them. The reason we do it is to show you what a typical season looks like and offer you our recommendations.

This time we are taking on the mighty Newcastle United. This club has one of the best fan bases in the country, the Toon as they are affectionately known. They have a great history, and some well known names from Kevin Keegan to Alan Shearer, from David Ginola to Faustino Asprilla. The Keegan era was especially memorable.

In this guide we are going to:

• Look at the league performance and individual performances.
• We will look at the tactics which have been used in Football Manager 24.
• Potential transfers and areas of improvement.

Read on if you too want to create the entertainers with Newcastle United!

Newcastle United Results

In this section we talk through the team results and what they mean to us. While this is very general data, it can help to identify bigger problems like scoring and conceding. You can see what quality of teams you play well against and simple things like whether you are better at home or away.

Let’s get into it! So straight away you can see that we had a lot of green dots, which mean wins. We won 6 from our first 7, the only loss coming at Luton, which I blame on adapting. October then saw another unbeaten month, until November where we had a rough run into December.

December then turned into an awesome month where we dispatched the middle of the road and lower teams. If you look at the three games we lost, there is no clear pattern. They aren’t top or lower teams, they are a mixture. The Brighton FC game was farce from start to finish, but I’m not bitter…….much.

Looking at the league, we are doing really well. We are in a pack of three which are breaking away from the league. To my surprise Tottenham are also part of the league title pack. The good news is that I have a game in hand and the bad news is that Man City have 3 games in hand. This could get spicy.

Defensively we are brilliant and things seem to be working well. We have conceded the second least in the league, at a rate of less than one a game. The problem I can see is goals, while we are scoring more than most we are unfortunately falling behind the teams in front. We do have a good goal difference though, so it is not an immediate concern.

Individual Performance

In this section, we speak about the individual performances in the squad. This will show who the best players are as well as the weak links in the team. We will also use basic data here to look at the passing completion and Xg, otherwise I will write the War and Peace of football stats.

On first observations, there are some players playing to an exceptional standard. We have 8 players playing over a 7 average rating, some which are not obvious choices to me. We also have a number of other players playing to a good level of 6.90 and above, so very happy. Kieran Trippier has been amazing, but at 33 we have received a very big bid of £45m.

Sandro Tonali is the stand out star and the press even remarked that I was getting the best out of him. It’s no real surprise that the defence have got some fantastic ratings so far as they are the heroes.

So it is plain to see that we have a few ‘bottlers’ in this team. Looking at the Xg ratings, Joelinton, Harvey Barnes and Alexander Isak are all under performing. This explains why our attack is suffering on the league table, recently Callum Wilson has taken the starting striker spot.

When we move onto the pass completion, Kieron Trippier, Harvey Barnes and Miguel Almiron are all missing the mark. This is a worry as they are all my first team wide players.

Newcastle United Tactics

In this section we discuss the tactic that we have been using so far on FM24. We use the tactic we create in the day one series as a starting point and then we can discuss what changed. Sometimes unfortunately the best laid plans do go to waste.

With Newcastle United we wanted to go with our best striker Isak. He is an advanced forward so he needs the ball along the floor. With Newcastle United they had a lot of wide players so we needed to include them, and that is where the inside forward idea came from. On FM24 I always opt for an attacking, supportive and defensive role in a three man midfield, this was no different.

The defence was an easy one as I wanted the full back positions to push into the space on the wings in front. This in turn creates an overload on the opposition defence, where you can attempt to pen the opposition in. The ball playing defenders were just because we play passing football and they have an outlet in DM. Works like a charm, despite being a classic.

Conclusion

Newcastle United are a team on the up in real life, and on FM24 they are no different. They have the resources to fund the project that they are starting and have got the people in place. I have really enjoyed Newcastle United on this save game, they defence have been truly impressive. Going into the Christmas season the board gave me little gift.

The strength of this team is the defence, it has been a solid base to work from. The defence has strength in depth and they fill the numerous roles really well. The weakness of this team to my surprise have been the forward line. Isak, Almiron and Barnes are really not hitting the mark if we are to push on.

The opportunity here is to create a killer team. There are only a couple of positions to fill with young talent and you could create team that could challenge every year. The threat to the Newcastle United team is that if the team fail to achieve then the team will get gutted by rivals and the process will have to start again. The life of a selling club.

Time for you to start a football manager 24 save game with Newcastle United and get the success they deserve. Please like and comment what you think on this series.