Things to which I’m looking forward (1): the brothers Longstaff. Neves and Moutinho are as clever a pair as any, and playing them must be extremely frustrating. Running power is definitely an advantage when it comes to negating them, but nous and chill are necessary too. I wonder if we’ll see Sean try and take them out of the game by hitting long passes into the channels for Joelinton, Almiron and Saint-Maximin.
Newcastle make one change from their last game – and the one before that: Fabian Schar is injured, so Federioc Fernandez comes in. Andy Carroll is also injured, ctrl C, ctrl V.
As for Wolves, Willy Boly hurt himself in training – badly, say the rumours – so his place in that famous back three goes to Leander Dendoncker. As such, Doherty comes into midfield, with Jota for Cutrone the other change from their last league game.
Teams!
Newcastle United (a deliberately stodgy, affirmingly Spangeordie 4-5-1): Dubravka; Yedlin, Fernandez, Lascelles, Clark, Willems; Almiron, Longstaff M, Longstaff S, Saint-Maximin; Joelinton. Subs: Darlow, Krafth, Dummett, Shelvey, Atsu, Gayle, Muto.
Wolverhampton Wanderers (an ideologue’s 3-4-3): Rui Patricio; Dendoncker, Coady, Saiss; Doherty, Moutinho, Neves, Jonny; Traore, Jimenez, Jota. Subs: Vallejo, Pedro Neto, Cutrone, Ruddy, Ruben Vinagre, Kilman, Ashley-Seal.
Var’s straight man: Kevin Friend (Leicestershire)
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Preamble
In his epochal treatise on modern football, On Liberty, John Stuart Mill popularised the phrase “tyranny of the majority”. Roughly, his point was that most people are wrong about most things most of the time – though of course he made an exception for Mike Ashely – before going on to predict that Steve Bruce would do some decent work in his management career and that a few bad results at the start of a season would not mean that Wolves had “been found out”.
Of course, at Newcastle, all Bruce had to do was copy Rafael Benitez – it just took him a while to put his ego away, as it would as us all, and now he has things have improved. Wolves meanwhile, have not “been found out” because there is no “finding out” to be done. How they play should be obvious and why it works should be obvious; they were good last season because, as even Mill knew in 1859, football doesn’t change: decent players, well managed, will make for a decent team.
It’s hard to see much in the way of speed or goals today, but such is utilitarianism, or something.
Kick-off: 2pm GMT, baby.
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