Truth is the first casualty – Newcastle United form and goals | OneFootball

For Newcastle United fans, this has been an ‘interesting’ start to the season.

For some time we had been forced to accept that off the pitch matters were going to severely impact the early stages of this 2025/26 campaign.

Alexander Isak was determined to force his way out of St James’ Park.

Yoane Wissa was determined to force his way into Newcastle United.

The summer transfer window as a whole had been a relatively slow one, with also injuries for Eddie Howe to deal with, plus longer-term recoveries back to full fitness still in progress for others.

Ahead of this match on Saturday against Fulham, I am hearing plenty of people (journalists, pundits, Newcastle fans…) asking when Newcastle United are going to find their goalscoring form.

I want you to consider two sets of stats…

Opening six Newcastle United matches of this 2025/26 season;

Villa 0 Newcastle 0

Newcastle 2 Liverpool 3

Leeds 0 Newcastle 0

Newcastle 1 Wolves 0

Newcastle 1 Barcelona 2

Bournemouth 0 Newcastle 0

Played 6 Won 1 Drawn 3 Lost 2 Goals Scored 4 Goals Conceded 5

The most recent six Newcastle United matches of this 2025/26 season;

Newcastle 4 Bradford 1

Newcastle 1 Arsenal 2

Union S-G 0 Newcastle 4

Newcastle 2 Forest 0

Brighton 2 Newcastle 1

Newcastle 3 Benfica 0

Played 6 Won 4 Drawn 0 Lost 2 Goals Scored 15 Goals Conceded 5

The thing is with statistics is that there are many different ways to present them.

Different variations on the truth.

For those wanting to be negative, they are wanting to solely focus on AND present the Premier League statistics, especially when it comes to goals, as well as results.

To me, that is a ridiculous way to look at what has happened with Newcastle United so far, to ignore all of the other results (and goals and performances) in other competitions.

Also, you have to include all of the various other factors as well, not purely present chosen statistics that suit your agenda.

The fact is that Newcastle United have scored in all of their last six matches, 15 goals in total, winning four matches and losing two. We all know what happened in the Arsenal and Brighton matches, not beyond possibility that if things had fallen only slightly differently, this could have been six wins out of six, Newcastle were still leading deep into that Arsenal game despite second best with their performance, whilst Newcastle were well on top at Brighton and looking likely to get the winner, only to be sucker punched by the Seagulls on the break. That is football, it happens.

However, the underlying facts, the statistics, also point to Newcastle United far better these most recent six matches, compared to the opening six.

No doubt some of you will say, well the last six games have been against generally lesser opposition, which may be true. Which is also kind of the point, or a large part of what I am getting at.

However, the fact is that Eddie Howe has been in a far better position to deal with these last six games, as opposed to the first half dozen. You know, like having a striker available…

What is more relevant when judging what kind of state Newcastle United are in to get a result in this Fulham match in the Premier League on Saturday….should we be giving so much weight to what happened say in the early goalless draws at Villa and Leeds, or should we be looking at games such as Benfica, Forest and Union S-G, even that (second half of the) Brighton match, United’s last four games?

As well as Woltemade and Wissa signed so late in the window and having no pre-season with their new teammates and unavailable for the opening games, you then had the attacking options further crushed with Gordon’s three game ban, plus then injuries to Wissa and Ramsey.

Against the likes of Benfica, we saw just how devastating Woltemade and Gordon can be, that third goal when they combined to set up Barnes, was simply delicious.

Newcastle United were undeniably poor in that first half at Brighton but this was away to a very good team, who have made a habit of winning against the likes of Man City, Liverpool and Arsenal. Eddie Howe

Apart from that, in the last six matches, the only time Newcastle United have been second best in terms of performance, was against Arsenal. Who were at the very top of their game and showed why they are top of the league and favourites to stay there.

This article isn’t to say that Newcastle United have now arrived, that everything is perfect and there will be no more setbacks.

This is football and so many teams are competitive now, whether that is Premier League, Champions League, or League Cup.