Season In Review: Three Overlooked Early-Season Moments

This season could have been very different. Before the emergence of the 4-3-3, before Hatem Ben Arfa or Papiss Cissé had even started a Premier League match for Newcastle this year, there was a remarkable unbeaten stretch that propelled Newcastle to the top of the table. While mocking analysts disaparaged the club, citing a purportedly easy schedule, this run would lay the foundation for further success in the spring.

Looking back on it now, the first 11 games did have a few slices of good fortune. If these three moments, now buried under the weight of a triumphant campaign, had gone differently, where would Newcastle have finished?

August 20: Fabricio Coloccini avoids injury after gruesome Phil Bardsley tackle

Two members of our podcast panel named the captain their player of the season. Alan Pardew concurrred, calling Coloccini Newcastle's best player, an award with quite a bit of competition this year. While Ryan Taylor received the plaudits for his lethal free kick at the Stadium of Light, Sunderland may still have had the last laugh. Bardsley's ugly 89th-minute challenge on Coloccini earned him a red card, and to this day, I have no idea how the Argentine stalwart walked away from it. A broken leg for Coloccini, especially with Mike Williamson also on the shelf, would likely have ticketed Newcastle for the bottom half this year.

September 24: Demba Ba scores his first goal against Blackburn en route to a hat trick

By January, Ba was being labeled the signing of the season by virtually everyone. Over the summer, however, his shaky start served only to enrage fans still smarting over Newcastle's sale of Andy Carroll in January. As chanting crowds would soon remind us, Ba didn't start scoring until after Ramadan. And his first goal, requiring some deft footwork to turn and free himself for the finish, started a post-holiday run that would produce the bulk of Newcastle's tallies in the first half of the season.

As we have since seen, Ba appears very much to be a confidence player. Had Paul Robinson snuffed out the striker's effort here, would Ba have continued to labor, much as he did at the end of the season? A Leon Best-led strikeforce doesn't exactly carry the same threat as the one that terrorized opponents with Ba, and then Cissé, scoring at will.

November 5: Dan Gosling handball in box goes unnoticed

In the 11th and final match of the unbeaten string, Gosling plagued his former team by using his arm to deflect a shot from Louis Saha wide of the net. Newcastle thrived most of the season by taking three points against teams in the middle and bottom of the table. A draw or loss against then-struggling Everton may have planted a seed of doubt in Pardew and his squad, which could easily have spiraled out of control. After the match against Everton, two trips to Manchester and a home date against Chelsea followed in rapid succession. But referee Andre Marriner failed to spot the infraction, Newcastle won 2-1, and a still-defiant side hung onto a brave draw at Old Trafford two games later. 

My co-blogger Bob has been engaged in a season-long project to help explain what makes clubs win consistently. Early in the season, Newcastle's metrics were mostly mid-table, but a few good breaks helped develop the team into the dangerous outfit it is today. With a system that seems to work, and summer reinforcements seemingly on the way, let's hope that good fortune won't be needed to keep the club high in the table, and progressing deep in the Europa League.

Comments

[Dave From Newcastle]

A couple of others that stand out to me:

The game at Villa, fell behind 1-0 early and in the past that was recipie for disaster. Instead, the lads fight back for a 1-1 draw in a game they should have won.

And then the two Wolves matches for opposite reasons- the first one where we got the officiating breaks on a way to a win and then losing that 2-0 lead and dropping 2 points at home to the bottom team in the prem. In the end those 2 points don't get us to CL, but they would have been nice to have had in our pocket prior to the City and Everton matches.

[steve]

ALSO the home game vs chelsea when luiz should have walked early doors bringing down ba as the last man. we lost 0-3 and in no way was it a 0-3 performance,even gary neville said that live on tv, we played well and just didnt get the rub.

[Belton]

I'm not sure that it qualifies as overlooked but compared to the stellar goals scored throughout the rest of the season, Shola's late equalizer against Spurs tends to get lost in the shuffle a bit. That was back when everyone kept saying NUFC hadn't played anyone yet. When they drew against Spurs, the fluke worries went out the door. It was on.

[Kingy]

The lack of a left back early on could have been a killer. Chelsea at home and man city away marked the point in the season when Raylor got found out. If that had happened earlier, without others being available to allow the shift around that followed, things could have been very different in a bad way.

[Matt]

Good shouts, everyone. Almost put Shola v. Spurs on the list, but thought it was too big. The disallowed Wolves goal was a lot like the Gosling handball...probably should have just grouped those two together.

David Luiz with the no-doubt red card, you could almost say was the reverse of these other situations. If he (rightly) gets sent off, you wonder if Taylor gets injured, and that might have been the difference between 5th and 3rd. Who knows?

[Ryan]

Good point about the Luiz no call. That still riles me up. If called, the match would have been MUCH different. I truly believe that and think we had a chance to take all 3 points out of that match if Luiz had been sent off.

Honestly that is one of the excuses I hate the most: when announcers say it is too early in a match to give a red. I get that the whole dynamic of the match is changed very early, but a red card offense is a red card offense. Doesn't matter if it's the 80th second or 80th minute.