Eddie Howe highlights what Newcastle United missed due to Bruno Guimaraes' absence on Sunday
Newcastle United once again failed to win a game in which Bruno Guimaraes was not involved. That's now nine games in the Premier League that the Brazilian has missed, and the Magpies haven't won any of them.
It's a damning statistic that makes Newcastle feel like a one-man team, and while we questioned last night what Newcastle are going to do when he eventually moves on, Eddie Howe has gone into detail about what the team was lacking through his absence on Sunday.
Newcastle didn't play particularly badly on Sunday, but Aston Villa were a notch above in every area of the pitch. Had Sandro Tonali beaten Emi Martinez in the opening minute, everything would have been different, undoubtedly.
However, that Martinez save ended up typifying what was to come. Villa were going to get the rub of the green all game, not through luck; they did earn it, but it's fair to say that nothing really fell for Newcastle over 90 minutes. But at the same time, particularly in the final third, they did nothing to create their own luck.
Eddie Howe knew just what was missing from the side on Sunday with Bruno absent
We wondered just what Bruno Guimaraes would have brought to the side to change things, and Eddie Howe was able to answer that for us in his post-match interview.
"I thought he was a big miss. In saying that, I thought Lewis Miley and Sandro (Tonali) both played well; they both had good games today, so it's not necessarily a slight on them.
"We missed his forward thinking, he always wants to pass forward, he's always looking for a creative pass. You could see we missed that today. He always wants the ball, he's always demanding the ball from his teammates, they're massive qualities and his never-say-die spirit and attitude, so I think you lose a lot when a player like that isn't available. But we can't rely on one player; we do have to find a way of winning without him."
Change is needed to survive when we don't have Bruno Guimaraes
This once again speaks to the need to play with a number 10, particularly when Bruno isn't available. We need someone whose job it is to try to unlock the defence and get the ball behind the defence for a striker to put away.
Nick Woltemade seems ideally suited to that role as it's becoming increasingly clear that he's not an out-and-out striker in the regular sense. Not one that works in the Premier League, anyway.
Annoyingly, we feel that Sandro Tonali has these qualities in his locker and should be more than capable of filling that role in Bruno's absence, but he's clearly lacking confidence this season.
