Newcastle's Struggles: From Glory to Uncertainty

Thirty years on from Keegan’s 5-0, Newcastle stare at a very different reality.

On Tuesday, the club’s social media team rolled out the footage every supporter knows by heart: Philippe Albert’s chip, St James’ Park shaking, Manchester United routed and Newcastle sitting on top of the Premier League. A reminder of what this place once felt like. A reminder, too, of how far away that all seems right now.

Because Matthias Jaissle’s Newcastle are not swashbuckling. They are searching.

From nostalgia to nerves

Newcastle go to Selhurst Park on Sunday to face a struggling Crystal Palace side, but they do so with a record that has stripped away the early-season optimism. Three defeats in their last four league games. Eight points from seven. Back-to-back 4-1 hammerings at Leeds United and Coventry City. A home loss to Aston Villa that ended in boos cascading down from the stands.

“The pressure will seriously be on if they don't get a result at Palace,” says Charlotte Robson from the True Faith Newcastle United podcast. That pressure is already visible in the way the team plays: hesitant, disjointed, unsure of itself.

Supporters have started to question what, exactly, Jaissle’s Newcastle are supposed to be. After five years of Eddie Howe and a clearly defined style that brought a first major domestic trophy since 1955, they now see a side that looks, as Chris Sutton put it on BBC Radio 5 Live, “chaotic”.

“There is not enough in the final third in terms of creativity and they have a vulnerability at the back,” Sutton adds. The Villa defeat underlined both points with brutal clarity.

Newcastle managed one shot on target in that game. One. It came from centre-back Sven Botman. When Jaissle needed a late goal, he threw on Dan Burn and used the defender up front. That is not the swagger of a team that knows where it is going. It is the improvisation of a manager still feeling around in the dark.

The cost of selling the crown jewels

None of this has arrived without warning. Alan Shearer, watching the summer unfold, saw it coming.

“Speaking purely as a fan, I think we have to get ready for a tough season and some very challenging times ahead,” he said in July, shortly after Howe walked away.

By then, the exodus was already under way. Anthony Gordon had gone to Barcelona for more than £69m. Sandro Tonali to Tottenham in a deal worth up to £100m. Within a week of Shearer’s comments, Bruno Guimaraes joined Arsenal for £75m. Kieran Trippier, the 36-year-old England defender and one of the dressing room’s key leaders, also departed in the summer.

“You cannot keep on selling your best players and then hope to be in contention at the top of the table,” Shearer warned.

Seven games into the campaign, his words echo loudly. Newcastle’s two league wins have come away at Tottenham and at home to newly promoted Hull City. Everything else has felt muddled, flat or downright alarming.

“If you had said at the end of last season Newcastle would lose Gordon, Guimaraes, Tonali and Howe, you would probably get this [eight points from seven games],” said Rory Smith, football correspondent of the Observer, on BBC Radio 5 Live’s The Monday Night Club.

This is what transition looks like when it is not carefully managed. This is what happens when you strip away proven quality and experience in one go and ask a new manager to solve the puzzle on the fly.

Youth, potential… and a lack of punch

Newcastle did not sit on the money. Around £250m went out in transfer fees over the summer. But it went on a particular type of player.

Young. Raw. Unproven at this level.

Many of the arrivals are 21 or under. Ivory Coast winger Bazoumana Toure and French midfielder Aladji Bamba have yet to start a Premier League match despite being fully available. Sean Steur, 18, impressed when he started against Hull in September, then disappeared from the league picture entirely. Not a minute since.

“The profile of the players Newcastle signed in the summer, and it may well bear fruit in time... they went very young and relatively inexperienced,” Smith said. “They didn't go out and sign a load of established Premier League players.”

That strategy might define the next five years. It does little to help the next five weeks.

The problems are stark at both ends. Newcastle have gone 16 home games in all competitions without a clean sheet, the longest such run in their history. They are conceding two goals a game in the league. Only Crystal Palace (17) and Ipswich (15) have let in more than Newcastle’s 14.

Up front, the void left by Alexander Isak is still yawning open almost 14 months after his British record £125m move to Liverpool. Callum Wilson, who departed in the same summer, has arguably not been properly replaced either. Yoane Wissa arrived as his successor, Nick Woltemade as the big-money Isak replacement in a deal worth up to £69m in August 2025.

Woltemade is now on loan at Juventus. Wissa has struggled for rhythm and consistency since returning from injury. The result is a team that rarely looks like scoring and rarely looks like keeping a clean sheet.

“Newcastle fans have every right to be a little bit concerned,” says Sutton. “They didn't look like scoring against Villa and that is what really concerns Newcastle fans.”

Jaissle’s learning curve

Jaissle did not walk into a simple job, but he did arrive with a formidable CV. Newcastle paid Al-Ahli £9.5m in compensation to get him after he led the Saudi club to consecutive Asian Champions League titles. Before that, he built a reputation as a sharp, progressive coach at Red Bull Salzburg.

On Tyneside, the expectations were immediate. Big fee, big pedigree, big club. Yet the Premier League is a different landscape, and at 38, Jaissle is discovering that his ideas need time to bed in.

Seventy-nine days into his reign, the imprint is faint. The promise when he was unveiled was an “aggressive attacking team”. Robson is blunt about where they are on that journey.

“At the start of the season it was made clear in interviews we wanted to be an aggressive attacking team. We are not there yet, we're still working it out.”

John Anderson, the former Newcastle defender, senses a coach still locked into his own blueprint.

“One result can change a lot - all it needs is one good win and all of a sudden you're back on track - but Matthias Jaissle seems very set in his ways at this moment in time,” he told BBC Sport.

That rigidity might yet pay off if the players grow into his system. Right now, it looks like a side caught between the security of what it used to be and the demands of what it is being asked to become.

Calm at the top, questions in the stands

Inside the club, there is no public sign of panic. Chief executive David Hopkinson and sporting director Ross Wilson project calm. Jaissle is expected to be given time. The investment in youth and the compensation paid to land him suggest a long-term plan, not a quick trigger.

Robson, too, argues for patience after a summer of upheaval. But patience in football is always conditional. It lasts only as long as the results allow.

“There are more questions being asked now,” she says. Those questions are not just about style. They are about direction, recruitment, and whether this season is a bump in the road or the start of something more troubling.

Newcastle’s next stretch will shape the mood. Palace away on Sunday. Everton at Goodison Park in the Carabao Cup last-16 next Thursday. Everton again at St James’ Park in the league on 2 November. Fulham away five days later, then the international break.

Jaissle does not want to reach that pause without a win in six league and cup games. The noise would be deafening.

For now, the club posts clips of Keegan’s entertainers and the night they tore Manchester United apart. It is good content. It stirs the soul. But it also throws a harsh light on the present.

Newcastle once knew exactly who they were. Over the next three weeks, we start to find out who they are going to be.