It wasn’t a good game by our standards, but we’ve had far worse games than this.

Newcastle were dangerous at times, but didn’t feel like they offered much. They had one perfect chance and nailed it.

They mostly sat back and defended which made it even harder for us to create anything.

And when we did create something, we were lacking some end product due to miss hit/under hit passes or shots that were wide. If one of those goes in the game state could completely swing.

Ødegaard is a big miss in helping us break down those types of defences. Having him back means we also have Trossard as an option off the bench to be impactful as a sub, as he’s shown us several times before. I also feel like we were missing a little something without Calafiori.

He seems to be our only player who will switch the ball which gives us another outlet.

It’s good to see some of fringe players back and/or getting minutes, but until Ødegaard is back and firing, we’re just applying bandaids as a short term fix and it was only going to work for so long. He’s a big miss