Newcastle United had probably identified the Brighton and Hove Albion clash last Saturday as a good opportunity to pick up our first Premier League win of the 2018/19 season but it certainly didn’t turn out like that.
With Brighton scoring via Beram Kayal from one of only two chances on target, Newcastle couldn’t muster a goal from their six efforts and the frustration was we had 27 attempts in total so really should’ve at least taken a point, if not more from the game.
A new week ticks by though as we sit bottom of the top-flight table and we continue in our search for a first win.
With a number of players coming in for flak following the match on social media, midfielder Mohamed Diame also came in for plenty of criticism following his own performance in the match.
With the 31-year-old having struggled to dominate the midfielder area, as well as seemingly being wasteful, his actual statistics from the game do tell a different story according to WhoScored as they rated him as being our fifth-best performer on the day, and in terms of being wasteful he had an 81.9% pass accuracy as well.
It was nice to see Shelvey testing gk from range yesterday i think if we had a less headless dm than diame he could move 15 yards further up park & grab some more goals maybe? #nufc
— Chris Currie (@Wig82) October 21, 2018
Yeah but Diame struggles to play Diame’s role 90% of the time. I’d like to see Ki get more game time along with Schar
— Firby (@jc_firby) October 21, 2018
Calmed down a little after yesterday. We are going down. Diame, Perez shocking can’t believe Rafa left them on the pitch. Shelvey and kenedy only positives. Even dubraka had poor game distribution was dreadful
— Darren Wood (@DWO1985) October 21, 2018
Dummet is one of our best players, he pretty much single handedly stopped it being 2-0 at the end amd put some good crosses in that Muto did a good job of hiding from. nobody in our side was better than him today.
— DeenJam (@DeenJam) October 20, 2018
We have too many players that think they are messi, trying to walk the ball into the net and take on as many people as possible. Perez and Diame two examples.
— ToonArmyTalk (@ToonArmyTalk) October 20, 2018
Everything ends with Diame. #nufc
— Colin Radford (@Skhitzo) October 20, 2018
How is diame still a footballer?!
— Abu Faiz (@AbuFaiz7) October 20, 2018
Include Ayoze and potentially even Kenedy and you’re spot on
— Dylan (@dyIanbrett) October 20, 2018
Stats don’t tell the whole story of course, but they add to it.