Newcastle United’s game plan started long before the game kicked off with an elaborate warm-up act catching out Mikel Arteta
Gary Neville was caught napping by Newcastle United’s tactics in the Carabao Cup shoot out against Arsenal.
The former England and Manchester United star was working as a pundit for Sky Sports and made a note of Newcastle’s warm-up as Kieran Trippier, Fabian Schar, Sven Botman and Dan Burn, as a left-back, acted out a fake warm-up exercise.
But when the teams emerged for the game, Newcastle instead lined up with a five-man defensive rearguard that included Lewis Hall as left-back and Burn at centre-half. Newcastle also tried to muddy the waters by warming Lewis Miley up with the team that started rather than with the other substitutes to further confuse the Gunners.
Neville, who was pouring praise on Arsenal, said before the match: “Just some breaking news, Newcastle are warming up with a four (flat back four) at the back which I think makes sense. Because the idea of Tonali and Guimaraes in midfield on their own would be a big ask so Lewis Hall looks like he is going to go into midfield. It will give Newcastle more of a chance.”
Both Fot Mob and Whoscored.com had the formation down as a 5-4-1 formation which left pundits baffled before the game unfolded. Jason Tindall, when asked if the defensive switch up had worked a treat, told Chronicle Live: “It did yeah. Going into the game tactically, we had to be good. We had to be ourselves but we knew with the scoreline from the first game we could not rely on that. We had to take the game to Arsenal and we did. We made the tactical tweaks and the players executed it to the plan and it worked it so well.”
Meanwhile, Eddie Howe credited Newcastle’s press after the game with the second and all important killer goal from Anthony Gordon coming form a Fabian Schar steal as he slid in to pinch the ball. Howe said: “We wanted to get pressure on them [William Saliba and Gabriel] and in order to do that we had to get bodies in the right areas and press high – that is how we decided to do it.”
