The harder you work then the luckier you get? | OneFootball

Interesting to look at a different angle with Newcastle United and their opponents.

What dictates your chances of winning and losing.

So many factors involved.

However, one of the key ones is laid out below.

How do Newcastle United match up on this front with their opponents?

These are the last nine Newcastle United matches in the Premier League and the distances covered in total by each team (all stats via BBC Sport):

Newcastle United players 116.39km and Everton players 111.74km

Newcastle United players 112.40km and Manchester City players 113.64km

Newcastle United players 111.01km and Brentford players 114.13km

Newcastle United players 116.85km and West Ham players 114.08km

Newcastle United players 114.50km and Fulham players 110.21km

Newcastle United players 115.16km and Brighton players 113.59km

Newcastle United players 109.45km and Forest players 106.43km

Newcastle United players 112.94km and Arsenal players 115.08km

Newcastle United players 113.23km and Bournemouth players 109.03km

As you can see, in six of these last nine Premier League matches (BBC Sport previously didn’t show these stats of total distances covered for each match), Eddie Howe’s Newcastle United players comfortably outrunning the opposition, collectively covering more distance.

Indeed, Saturday’s hammering of Everton showed the biggest gap of all nine games, with the Newcastle United players collectively covering almost 5km more distance than their opponents.

Workrate is the very least fans can expect.

In the three of the nine Premier League matches when the opposition have covered more distance, two of those were against the two best possession sides in the division. Newcastle United forced into sitting in more against both Arsenal and Manchester City, thus lowering the distances the players covered to an extent. Against Man City there was a collective difference of just over a km anyway.

I know Newcastle United had Dan Burn sent off against Brentford, which automatically will cut the team’s total distance covered with one less man, however, maybe that is one game where Newcastle United didn’t quite match the workrate of their opponents and were second best on every front really on that occasion.