How AFCON has potential to derail Newcastle United without the club planning ahead | OneFootball

Given how Nick Woltemade is a burgeoning talent with little experience (none in the Premier League) but a lot of raw ability, the entire Newcastle United community would’ve heaved a sigh of relief when Yoane Wissa was also signed (albeit for way too high a fee).

I originally began writing this article while watching highlights of all the September international action happening during the break from league football and some personal emergencies stopped me from completing it.

Alas, like what happened with the Alexander Isak saga, the situation changed by the time I got back to finishing it with Yoane Wissa injured and out for the next month.

I could now call it how “World Cup Qualifiers + AFCON could derail this Newcastle United season.”

Be that as it may, I’ll stick to the original (and important) issue of this winter that could really turn quite cold and bitter for us.

The reason being that for the first time since the pre-Covid era, we’ll have a player leaving for AFCON but we’ve never had someone as crucial as our no. 9 going missing for a month for that tournament (feels strange saying that about someone who’ll make his debut for the club only in mid Oct, but it is what it is).

Usually, AFCON used to start in the first week of January and end in first week of February. This allowed Premier League players to play almost till the end of the year and almost through the festive period before leaving during the leanest month of the season, since there were no European fixtures till mid-Feb and there was also in recent times a week’s winter break for PL teams in Jan-end/Feb week one.

Last year that changed and with the advent of two European rounds in January, not only did the one game every three days Sept-Dec scenario extend through Jan (if alive in all comps) but the winter break was also lost.

This mid-Dec to mid-Jan AFCON timing suits football leagues across Europe excluding the UK, all of whom have a break over the festive period. It’s the greater good in terms of players who’ll leave as well as clubs who get affected. However, for a Newcastle United recently back in Europe, defending champion in the League cup and having just signed its main experienced goal scorer who’s to take part in Afcon, this could be a hammer blow.

To understand the situation, I’m putting down a list of potential fixtures during the Dec 14th to Jan 20th period that Yoane Wissa could be out for.

Here I’m assuming a worst (also best) case scenario of Newcastle United playing every possible game in all competitions during the AFCON period and Wissa’s DR of Congo reaching the semi-final stage of AFCON 25 and since they have a third place play-off same day as the final each time, for him to be involved till Jan 18th (DR Congo finished 4th last time out, losing the 3rd place play-off on penalties to South Africa, so it’s not unrealistic).

FIFA requires players to be released a minimum of a week before the start of major international tournaments by their clubs to go for national training camps. With AFCON starting on Sunday 21st Dec I’m assuming players will mostly not play Premier League on the weekend of Saturday 14th before leaving (sometimes there’s a verbal agreement allowing the player to arrive a day or two later, especially for nations not playing on the opening 2-3 days, however, sometimes they get injured and miss the tournament so its a sensitive topic).

Thus I am assuming Wissa (if fit) would need to leave by Dec 13th latest, even though DRC play their first game vs Benin in Rabat on Tuesday 23 December. By a freak of nature, DRC’s only major competitor in the Afcon group stage happens to be the same side that’s their major competitor for a place in the current WC’26 qualifying groups – Senegal. They’d be expected to at least finish second in the group & make the knockouts – just like last time.

The following is the complete list of fixtures that Newcastle could play across the four competitions during the period mentioned above:

* Last match Wissa’d be eligible to play – Dec 10th – UCL – Away to Bayer Leverkusen

1) Dec 13 – PL – Away vs Sunderland (!!!) 2) Dec 16/17 – League Cup – QF 3) Dec 20 – PL – Home vs Chelsea 4) Dec 27 – PL – Away vs Man Utd 5) Dec 30 – PL – Away vs Burnley 6) Jan 3 – PL – Home vs Crystal Palace 7) Jan 7 – PL – Home vs Leeds Utd 8) Jan 10/11 – FA Cup – 3rd Round 9) Jan 13/14 – League Cup – SF 1st leg 10) Jan 17 – PL – Away vs Wolves 11) Jan 21 – UCL R7 – Home vs PSV Eindhoven 12) Jan 24 – PL – Home vs Aston Villa

Assuming Wissa plays on Jan 18th, travels back by Jan 21st, is rested and tested over next 2-3 days, he may make the bench vs Villa, but given he’d have played up to eight AFCON fixtures I am guessing the earliest Eddie Howe could look to start him again would be the UCL fixture vs PSG away in Paris on Jan 28th, quickly followed by Liverpool away on 31st Jan (likely pushed back to Feb 1st) and League Cup semi-final 2nd Leg on Feb 4/5.

If DRC exit at Round of 16 stage he’d be possibly back in time for FA Cup 3rd Round – missing 7/12 games listed above. Each subsequent AFCON round would add 1-2 game to those 7 in terms of what he’d miss.

The maximum sum total Wissa can miss, works out at 12 games. Not only that, its 12 games in 42 days! If we were to lose our League Cup title defence by round four, the max games he can miss would reduce to 10 – still a lot. With 8/38 PL games and 2/8 UCL games is a major proportion of the respective seasons.

1) Best case scenario – Woltemade plays 60-70 min every game, we don’t have too many close games where we need him to be out there for the full 90min and keep picking up points/going through to the next round and he doesn’t get injured. Osula regularly comes on for 30 min and does well, whether through the middle or on the wing, with Gordon playing through the middle (and Gordon will need his own periods of rest instead of playing 90 min every game across two positions). DRC lose in the Round of 16 (likely opponent Algeria) on Jan 6th and Wissa’s back by Jan 9th and ready to play for Newcastle by Jan 11th.

2) Worst case scenario – Woltemade picks up an injury sometime during this period and Gordon/Osula have to play through the middle every game thence forth, maybe one of those two hotheads also picks up an injury/suspension. DRC go the full distance and Wissa’s only back by Jan 21st  ready to play by Jan 24th or so. We drop many points in PL or UCL and exit the cups in the interim.

The practical reality will fall somewhere in between these two extremes. However, given the high press intensity demanded by the way Eddie Howe makes the team play, as well as the opponents being such that except perhaps vs Leeds and Burnley we won’t be able to rotate our first XI much, there are going to be some players becoming unavailable.

There’s no question that when available Yoane Wissa should deliver returns superior to any other player we could have gotten in his stead. However, this season he could miss over a third of our possible games due to not available through injury until sometime in October at the earliest and leaving in mid-Dec for a month. In the unlikely event that DRC make the World Cup finals in 2026, he’ll also miss the start of next pre-season and may not be available for the start of the PL season and in the subsequent 2027-28 season he’d again miss a month for Afcon.

Planning ahead for the future

Having this long-term visibility means we need to make a plan for the longer-term. Already the possible exit of Osula on deadline say seems like a bad idea in terms of timing, regardless of the money it could have potentially brought in.

Whilst the PSR funds available to us after the Isak sale might have been planned to help get a back up for Hall in January (Jayden Oosterwolde maybe) and to replace Willock (who’s too similar in profile to Ramsey) with somebody such as Davide Frattesi. We should first use it to get a third striker who is aged 23-25 years (older and more experienced than Osula), non-African (so won’t miss middle part of the season), with attributes closer to a Chris Wood/Liam Delap kind of hold up play nd  physical game striker who remains robust and largely injury free to complement what Wissa and Woltemade bring to the team. Perhaps on a loan with an option to buy in the summer.

It would also mean that we’d have three strikers in our senior PL/UCL squads (provided we then sanction Osula’s exit to another club) so we’d have to change the squad composition/balance.

On the brighter side, when Yoane Wissa eventually leaves – whether after three years for some transfer money or after completing his contract (he is a bit of a late bloomer so could go on longer than most strikers at the top of his game), we’d already have two strikers and there shouldn’t be any panic buys for the position which costs the highest transfer fees. Having another striker option could also mean the difference for positive results against PSV and PSG in January and a place in the UCL knock-outs or not.

Can the situation be salvaged? Yes.

Can the season still turn out to be a relatively successful one, establishing us finally amongst the elite lot with a longer run in Europe? Possibly.

But to do that, the club would have to be flexible on its plans, show foresight and plan for the extra striker now and be nimble/quick in terms of moving on Jan 2nd.

An aside – a reality check

The reality is that Isak’s leaving hasn’t made anything better on an immediate basis, apart from our PSR situation,, maybe in a couple of years time that could prove to be the case. Woltemade as a player is where Isak was when he arrived three years back and at a similar age. Back then Wilson was a 30 year old striker with an excellent goal scoring rate (and out injured when Isak arrived) – sound familiar to the central person with regard to this article?

If Isak hadn’t done what he did and with the ex-Woltemade additions all still arriving, we’d be looking at a potential title challenge or at least finishing 2nd (and given how we dominated all four games thus far and couldn’t put away chances, it’d be us not Liverpool top of the table right now with a perfect 12 points) this season with a title tilt next season after further strengthening the squad.

Now Eddie Howe has to transform Nick Woltemade into Alexander Isak, which’ll take time. Meanwhile Wissa’ll miss one third of the season (imagine Wilson injury time out every season) in total. That 2022-23 season we made CL without Euro fixtures midweek, we may just make it this time even with those extra games with better squad depth now, but we’ve been pushed back likely two years at least in terms of potential title challenges. Who knows who else might leave in future due to this?

The damage done by Isak’s move may not be fully apparent just yet. Damaging a new potential challenger before they started competing for the title could’ve been part of Liverpool’s gameplan.

Think Man U taking Van Persie just before he was set to sign for Man City, or then if someone had turned Aguero’s head just before Man City’s first title season. How many more years would it have taken them to win the PL if that’d happened?

And then Arne Slot really infuriated me by calling Isak “the best striker in the world” during his pre-game press conference last Friday. Yes, he likely is, but for you he wasn’t the world’s best when you had a price to pay for him.

Then you made him throw a strop to successfully get him at a cheaper price. Now he’s your player you acknowledge he’s the best. As I wrote earlier, when Real Madrid come calling, expect Liverpool to price him upwards of £200m, though Slot said in his post Atletico Madrid game interview that Liverpool was going to keep Isak and Ekitike for the rest of their careers (quite presumptuous announcing that they WILL – what if the players might feel differently at some point?).

What’s clear is just how much he fancied Isak. Also, Liverpool’s intermediaries who likely tapped up Isak via his agent would not have gone ahead with it without their club contacts getting a go ahead from Slot about pursuing him (Slot wouldn’t have known what exactly transpired during the whole saga – for plausible deniability – but you don’t chase a £250m spend without a go ahead from the person for whom its being done).

The need for our team to showcase THIS season that we are at the same level now as the ‘Super League Six’ and thus belong at the top table can’t be overstressed. It is what will put a stop to any chances of an ‘Isak-gate’ repeat with any other player. Post the 2012 title, Man City didn’t lose any players they weren’t willing to, except for those who reached the last year of their contract & ran it down.