Newcastle’s patchy form has provided a reality check and highlighted Callum Wilson’s importance

At full-time, there were boos.

Sporadic, admittedly, and they subsided rapidly upon colliding with the amount of credit banked by Eddie Howe and this Newcastle team over a remarkable calendar year. But still, evidence that the ride won’t all be smooth for the ambitious new management at St James’ Park.

There’s no escaping it: a promising start for Newcastle has dissolved into a decidedly ordinary one. Their only defeat of the season might have been endured deep into added time at Anfield but they’ve also only collected a solitary victory. That was way back in August, a whole two Prime Ministers ago.

Saturday brought a new challenge for Newcastle – breaking down obdurate opponents happy to sit back and absorb pressure. No-one inside St James’ Park was under any illusion that they failed to overcome it, with Howe bemoaning how Newcastle’s “decision making and patience” let the team down.

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“The last 20 minutes was a difficult watch,” he admitted afterwards. He could have been referring to Fabian Schar shooting high over the bar from 30 yards or Dan Burn lashing the ball into the Bournemouth dugout as the clock wound down, a move borne of deep frustration.

Tyneside will hold its nerve in the face of the first discomfort Howe and his team have felt in 2022, as well it should. Kevin Keegan once likened managing Newcastle to riding a black and white tiger and he was right – the peaks more pronounced and the dips exaggerated.

Europe? Perhaps that talk was too hasty, unless the maverick tendencies of Allan Saint-Maximin can be relied on through the season.

“A little bit,” Burn – a boyhood Newcastle fan – replied when asked if expectation had become over-inflated after the promise of the early games.

“As a fan base we are like that anyway. We always get ahead of ourselves. It has been like that since I was a kid. We have to be realistic, the way we look at the takeover and how we are building our squad.

“Europe is pushing it a bit but we should be pushing top ten comfortably.” They sit tenth currently, level with Bournemouth, but have a reasonable run of games coming up starting with a trip to in-form Fulham. “Hopefully we can reset after the international break,” Burn said.

Newcastle’s fans had taken the decision to suspend the tifosi-style flag displays which have become a part of the match-day routine to allow tributes to the Queen to take centre stage. It was admirable and probably correct but Burn felt it contributed to a strangely low-key occasion.

“Everything felt a bit flat and felt a bit weird, maybe with the Queen passing (and) without the flags too,” he said.

“Obviously we have to pay our respects and it was one of those days.”

Record signing Alexander Isak scored the penalty that levelled Philip Billing’s opener but otherwise was squeezed out of the contest. How he is used when Callum Wilson returns will be a fascinating sub-plot.

i understands striker Wilson will definitely return when hostilities resume after the international break at Fulham. An abundance of caution dictated that he missed out against his former side but how Newcastle miss him, Jonjo Shelvey and the maverick tendencies of Saint-Maximin.

They will be fine in the long-run. There was something satisfying about Howe’s reaction, both as a frustrated bystander on the touchline and then in the press conference afterwards. Too often Newcastle supporters have been fed lines about progress when what has played out has been decidedly turgid. Howe admitted it was not good enough, a learning curve that his players must traverse.

Newcastle lacked Saint-Maximin’s spark against Bournemouth

By Daniel Storey, i‘s chief football writer

One of the hardest teams in the Premier League to work out, not just because we’re not quite sure what Newcastle United’s owners expect from this season. Are Newcastle the side that haven’t won since the opening day and have only beaten a promoted club, putting Eddie Howe in trouble? Or are they the team that has only lost once (in the last seconds at Anfield), have drawn with Manchester City and can feel unfortunate that several decisions have gone against them, thus meaning Howe is taking them forward again? Who really knows.

But for all the transfer market work in 2022, a year during which Newcastle have signed a goalkeeper, two starting full-backs, an expensive central defender, a central midfielder for whom they broke their transfer record and a striker for whom they broke it again, they are still far too reliant on Allan Saint-Maximin’s unpredictable brilliance to create chances.

Saint-Maximin has been missing with a hamstring injury (Photo: PA)

On Saturday, without Saint-Maximin, we saw that issue laid bare. Newcastle’s best chances came from set pieces (and they scored a penalty). In open play, they were too predictable and so relied upon crosses into the box (24 in total vs Bournemouth’s three). Even without captain Chris Mepham, Bournemouth dealt with those fairly comfortably.

Between them, Newcastle’s other wide players (Miguel Almiron, Ryan Fraser, Matt Ritchie, Kieran Trippier, Matt Targett and Jacob Murphy) have successfully dribbled past a player 11 times this season; Saint-Maximin has done so 14 times by himself. Joelinton and Bruno Guimaraes are an excellent combination centrally and do drive forward with the ball, but without a threat out wide opposition teams can cover the two Brazilians and everything gets a little stodgy.

For Bournemouth – soon to be under the control of a Las Vegas-based consortium as a £150m buy-out nears completion – it made sense not to gamble too much.

Gary O’Neil has steadied a badly listing ship by returning to basics. There was nothing particularly subtle about their safety-first strategy but it was obdurate and effective. In Philip Billing, who scored a smart goal at the Gallowgate End, they had arguably the contest’s best player but their defensive unit – four specialist defenders and two midfielders who played so deep they were positively subterranean – was solid.

Goalkeeper Neto was outstanding too, saving brilliantly from Ryan Fraser in the first half and handling everything Newcastle pumped into the penalty area was consummate ease.

O’Neil said afterwards that he will talk to the club’s management about his role but he is set to continue on an interim basis indefinitely, with the managerial search paused while the takeover plays out in the background. That makes sense.

Bill Foley, the owner of NHL team Las Vegas Knights, leads a consortium which – i understands – hopes to have completed a buy out Maxim Demin by the end of October. He could do worse than give O’Neil an extended run at the role.

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