Opinion

Interesting when you look at the formlines of the 20 Premier League teams since the November international break.

Very early on in the season, Eddie Howe had said that with such a difficult pre-season, it could take until around that point for him to get his squad fully up to speed and integrated.

As we all know, Alexander Isak and Liverpool’s conduct caused all sorts of problems for the Newcastle United boss.

That and the fact only one of the six eventual Newcastle United signings in the summer had any kind of a pre-season with their new NUFC teammates, made it so difficult to hit the 2025/26 season running.

Eddie Howe has now been talking about the United form since the November internationals.

The Newcastle United Head Coach stating ahead of this weekend: “I think since the November international break,[from] the Manchester City game, I’ve seen an upturn in performances generally. We have been much more consistent. In that [November] break we did a lot of work, probably the only time we have been able to train in recent months.”

Ahead of this weekend’s matches, there had been 11 rounds of Premier League matches since...