Norwich City face Newcastle United at Carrow Road on Saturday.
Ahead of the game, canaries.co.uk's James Hicks spoke to Chris Waugh at The Athletic who covers the Magpies, to talk all things Newcastle United.
canaries.co.uk: Newcastle have won nine out of the last 13 with six wins in a row at home, effectively guaranteeing survival, what would you say the change has been to reignite the Magpies?
CW: The main thing, counter-intuitively when you think Eddie Howe’s coming in, an attacking manager at Bournemouth, a team who were renowned for scoring a lot of goals and being front footed.
Newcastle on the other hand are very defensively solid, they’ve gone from being the team who in 2021 set the unwanted record for the most goals conceded in a calendar year to now regularly keeping clean sheets, only conceding one goal more than once in the last sixteen matches.
So they really have built from the back, they’re not free flowing yet and Howe himself has admitted that long-term this isn’t how he wants the style to be. But they’re very effectively defensively now and that’s been a remarkable turnaround.
canaries.co.uk: How impressed have you been with Eddie Howe since his arrival? It’s not been straightforward with Trippier and Wilson injured too
CW: I’ve been very impressed with him, it took him a bit of time to turn things around and get the first win, even after the first win it took him about a month to get another win so it was a bit slow burnt to begin with, but what he has done is he’s worked with the players.
He undoubtedly had help in January with the players they signed, particularly in defence, but also the biggest compliment you can pay to Eddie Howe and his staff is that players who were struggling previously or who weren’t in the team who he has really turned around, the likes of Joelinton, Fabian Schar, Emil Kraft, Jonjo Shelvey, Ryan Fraser are all now some of the first names on the team sheet when they were struggling previously.
That’s a credit to Eddie and his staff how they’ve worked with them and coached them to help improve them and that has been extremely impressive and what Newcastle have lacked in recent years.
canaries.co.uk: You mention Joelinton, he’s transitioned from a striker to almost a centre-mid what kind of effect has that had on Newcastle?
CW: Yeah, there’s almost a sense of fortune about the change and it was the reverse fixture against Norwich that prompted that change where Ciaran Clark was sent off early and Eddie had to shift system and move Joelinton back into a midfield three and recognised from that point on that he was very good as a combative midfielder.
He’s so effective at disrupting the opposition, drawing and committing fouls, breaking up play, he brings real physicality to the midfield.
He’s really helped that left-hand side defensively allowing Newcastle to build this solid defensive platform.
canaries.co.uk: A last minute goal from Bruno Guimares on the weekend against Leicester saw him score two as well as getting an assist against Crystal Palace on Wednesday. How impressed have you been with him?
CW: Very impressed, he was brought in as someone who wouldn’t necessarily score goals, but he is already Newcastle’s third top scorer.
With Newcastle signing a Brazilian international for more than £30m you’d have thought he’d have to put him straight into the team but Eddie had a midfield trio that was working in Joe Willock, Shelvey and Joelinton and didn’t want to disrupt that too soon wanting to slowly integrate him so he could get used to the physicality and pace of the Premier League.
He looks a class above what Newcastle already have, he’s composed and controls the game and he is the sort of signing which hopefully signals the future direction Newcastle are going to travel in and he’s certainly established himself already as a fan favourite.
canaries.co.uk: What do you expect from the match on Saturday at Carrow Road?
CW: Newcastle have a terrible record at Carrow Road, certainly recently and it’s not necessarily been a happy away ground for them, certainly in 2015/16 it was basically the game that confirmed Newcastle were going to go down when Norwich scored an injury time winner so i think a lot of Newcastle fans won’t have very happy memories of Carrow Road.
But recently Newcastle fans and players are going into every game now believing that they have a very good chance of causing the opposition problems and potentially winning the game, I don’t expect a high scoring affair and I think there will only be one or two goals in it.
canaries.co.uk: With Trippier, Wilson, Fraser still injured, are there any other fresh injury concerns?
CW: There were a couple of niggles last night, Joelinton and Saint-Maximin going down but I don’t think there will be anything enough to keep them out of this weekend so I think that Newcastle will go with pretty much the same squad as they had with the Palace game.
Willock’s trying to push into the midfield but with that trio performing well it may just come down to physical health and whether some players are on the limit after two games inside a few days but I don’t expect many changes at all.