It got lost in the Bramall Lane blitz but Sunday brought another record for Newcastle United.
Behind Eddie Howe sat the most expensively assembled array of substitutes in the club’s long history, a £225m bench that included Newcastle’s record signing Alexander Isak and in Sandro Tonali, their most expensive midfielder.
To either side of them was Anthony Gordon, a £40m forward currently playing the best football of his career, and right-back Tino Livramento, another £40m signing that Newcastle made to “future proof” their defence moving forward.
Loan signing Lewis Hall, who club insiders believe is a future England international left-back, made his belated debut in the final eight minutes of the 8-0 win following a summer switch from Chelsea.
When Howe talks about “utilising his squad” for the Carabao Cup campaign it is no longer shorthand for surrendering League Cup ambitions.
Instead it reflects a recruitment policy that has been centred around building a group where losing one star man doesn’t spell disaster.
We will see on Wednesday how far along that road Newcastle really are, with Howe preparing to hand Hall and Livramento first starts while also retaining Elliot Anderson, the promising midfielder at the centre of an international tug of war between Scotland and England. The 17-year-old midfielder Lewis Miley, an academy graduate who has been exciting Newcastle’s coaching staff, is another player being considered for promotion. Youth will run through the XI.
“We have players that are really keen to play and show what they can do,” Howe said on Tuesday and he will leave his team selection until the last minute.
But he knows he has options, even with Joe Willock, Joelinton and Harvey Barnes all facing prolonged spells on the sidelines.
That the opponents are Manchester City is a guard against too much experimentation. Pep Guardiola prefers to run a tight squad to keep things competitive in his group but that comes with risk.
Injuries have started to bite at the Etihad and he made a pointed observation that, while Newcastle was a key game, he viewed the league games against Wolves and Arsenal, sandwiched by a trip to RB Leipzig in the Champions League, as “much more important”.
Guardiola’s downbeat pre-game utterances did not wash with Howe.
“I have no doubt we will see the best Manchester City,” he said. “He has not won as much as he has without giving everything to every moment to try and achieve success.”
For Howe the Carabao Cup selection dilemma is different. Newcastle may be competing across four competitions this season but in two of them – the Champions League and the Premier League – they are not realistic contenders.
It is the FA Cup and the League Cup, where they were beaten finalists last season, that offer the greatest route to ending the club’s long wait for silverware and the immortality that would follow. Howe will be acutely aware that tossing the cup competitions to one side seriously dented the reputation of some of his predecessors.
So we should expect a strong Newcastle side, even if injuries are a source of ever-present anxiety across a grueling autumn programme.
Tuesday brought unwanted confirmation that Barnes’s foot injury may require surgery and is likely to rule him out of a substantial part of Newcastle’s autumn fixture list.
Howe confirmed his spell on the sidelines would be “months rather than weeks”, a bitter blow for a player still finding his feet.
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