Newcastle set for five-team Champions League shootout – but will Isak be back?

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Not for the first time, Eddie Howe called it right. For weeks, the Newcastle United head coach has told anyone who would listen that nothing will be decided until the final day, that the skirmish for a Champions League place would go down to the wire. It feels like a fitting end to a season that has brushed disaster and embraced glory, an epic to end all epics — yet, on this occasion, Howe would have merrily accepted being wrong.

One point separates the five teams from third (Newcastle) downwards, with Manchester City holding a game in hand. The sides finishing fifth and above will qualify for the Champions League next season, which brings jeopardy — it could still be Europe’s top club competition, the Europa League or the Conference League.

“If you’d offered us this at the start of the season, we’d have snapped your hands off,” Dan Burn told NUFC TV.

This is the team they now are and aspire to be. “I can believe it’s so tight because the prize is so big and everyone’s fighting for it as hard as they can,” Howe said afterwards. “We’ve never got ahead of ourselves. We’ve never felt we were there or the job was done. Now it’s going to the end, to the last game, and who knows what twists and turns there are to come. The players have given so much. We know we need one more.

“My mood is always the same after we lose. I’m disappointed, I’m frustrated and it takes me time to get out of that way of thinking, but I will look back with positivity from the game. In fact, I know I will, because there was so much good to take from it. When you then look to the next game and we know what we have to do… the players are used to big games now. There’ll be none bigger than this.”

Howe would have taken this position back in December, when his side were 12th in the table and going nowhere, not that this will mean much at home to Everton next weekend, when Jordan Pickford, the lifelong Sunderland fan and former player, would love nothing more than a starring, puncturing role. This should not be a source of huge disquiet; not too long ago, Newcastle won a proper cup final rather than an echo of it.

Yet defeat against Arsenal — after three victories against them this season in the league and Carabao Cup — brought exasperation, if only because that story could easily have been different. During a first half when Howe’s players were the only team playing with urgency, chances came and chances went and, in the process, a huge opportunity was lost. In goal, David Raya had a blinder, repelling Bruno Guimaraes, Burn, Sven Botman and Harvey Barnes.

The second half, unsurprisingly, followed quite another trajectory. Newcastle began quietly, waned and forfeited impetus and Arsenal shook off their lethargy, Declan Rice scoring in the 55th minute with an exquisite curled finish from 20 yards. After all those losses to Howe’s side, including twice in the Carabao Cup semi-final, Rice told Sky Sports that Mikel Arteta’s message to them was to “take it personal”. The end brought scuffles and shoving.

For Newcastle, it was partially self-harm. One of Alexander Isak’s greatest qualities as a striker is his exquisite sense of timing, but it deserted him and his team at the Emirates Stadium. After making 41 appearances for his club and scoring 27 goals in all competitions, the Sweden international succumbed to a groin injury that has been troubling him, on and off, since before Wembley. Without him, Newcastle lacked the icy touch of a killer.

Alexander Isak was greatly missed (George Wood/Getty Images)

Newcastle have not won any of the four league games Isak has missed this season. Nor have they scored from open play, statistics which are not exactly encouraging. After suffering pain after training on Friday, he traveled with the squad to London and was then sent for a scan on Sunday morning. Howe described that as a “precaution”. Will he be back for Everton? “That’s unknown,” Howe said. “A lot will depend on how he reacts in the next few days.”

Perhaps it is too easy to say that the result might have been more favourable to Newcastle if Isak had been available, but also perhaps not. In the opening half, they mustered 10 shots, five of which were on target, although none came after the 17th minute. In only his second league start of the season, Callum Wilson lacked sharpness and mobility and, as Howe said, nothing fell to him. Isak, by contrast, is good enough to make things happen.

“It’s a difficult one to go too deep into because the standard of our performance with him missing was still really, really strong,” Howe said, although less so “in the final action, which he is probably better at than anyone,” he added. “We did create chances, we did look really good in almost every phase in that first half. It was a really strong performance in his absence. That has to be the confidence-lift we need when you review this game.” Something else: they kept going.

The greatest cause for optimism is that Newcastle have deep reserves to draw upon, if not yet a deep squad. Before the cup final, Lewis Hall and Anthony Gordon were ruled out, robbing Howe of his first-choice left-side. Briefly, it felt like the end of the world. Barnes and Tino Livramento felt otherwise and Liverpool were beaten 2-1 and 70 years with no domestic trophy came to a close. From an ending to a new beginning.

Compared to that? With or without Isak, this is eminently doable.

(Top photo: Newcastle and Arsenal players clash at the Emirates; by Shaun Botterill/Getty Images))

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