Newcastle's leaky defence meets Everton's conceding problem again
Four days after Everton beat Newcastle in the EFL Cup, the same defensive flaws on both sides return to the fore in Monday's Premier League meeting at St. James' Park.
Newcastle and Everton meet for the second time in five days on Monday, and the underlying pattern from their EFL Cup tie is unlikely to have changed much in the interim.
Everton won that fourth-round match 3-1 at Hill Dickinson Stadium on Thursday, with goals from James Garner, Hayden Hackney and Thierno Barry, according to Guardian Football. Jordan Pickford was prominent in goal, and David Moyes made the notable call of dropping Jack Grealish for the occasion.
The Opta supercomputer gives Newcastle a 45.9% chance of winning the league fixture, with the draw and an Everton win making up the rest, per The Analyst. That is a modest favourite's tag for a home side that has not solved the problem Everton just exposed in the cup.
Newcastle's shot count exposes a pressing and defensive problem
No team in the Premier League has been shot at more often than Newcastle through the opening eight matchdays, with 138 attempts faced in total, data from The Analyst shows. The expected goals value conceded from those attempts, 13.7, is the fourth-worst in the league, a measure of the quality of chances allowed rather than just the volume.
Those two numbers together point to a team being carved open rather than simply bombarded with speculative efforts. Newcastle faced at least 15 shots in six of their eight matches, a frequency matched only by Coventry City, suggesting the issue is structural rather than a one-off bad afternoon.
Matthias Jaissle's side had already stumbled into back-to-back league defeats against Coventry and Aston Villa before steadying themselves with a 2-0 win over Crystal Palace. Thursday's cup exit to Everton, in which Moyes's side exploited exactly this defensive vulnerability, suggests the underlying fragility has not gone away even as results have fluctuated.
Everton's habit of falling behind undermines their away form
Everton's own defensive record carries a different but equally damaging pattern. They have conceded the first goal in 16 Premier League matches in 2026, more than every side bar Sunderland, per The Analyst's figures.
The consequence is stark: Everton have won only one of their last 21 league matches in which they have conceded first, and none of their last 12. Falling behind has effectively meant abandoning hope of victory, regardless of what follows.
That matters because Everton have lost their last two league games, including a 2-0 defeat at Arsenal, and have not lost three in a row under Moyes since October 2011. Their away form compounds the worry: since a 3-2 win at Newcastle in February, Everton are winless in nine straight away league matches, their worst such run since a 14-game winless streak between December 2023 and September 2024.
Tarkowski's duels and Barnes's final-third output could decide it
If Everton are to break that away run, their captain James Tarkowski is central to how they defend without the ball. He has won more duels than any other Premier League player this season, 63 in total, and his 78% success rate is the best of the 280 players who have contested at least 20 duels, according to The Analyst.
Those numbers describe a defender who wins individual physical contests consistently, which matters against a Newcastle side built to create chances through sustained pressure in the final third. Tarkowski's Premier League career began with a first start for Burnley back in 2017, and he has topped the competition's charts ever since for duels won, aerial duels won and shots blocked.
Newcastle's own route to goals increasingly runs through Harvey Barnes, who will reach a personal landmark on Monday by making his 100th league appearance for the club. Barnes has been involved in seven goals across his last 12 league appearances, four scored and three assisted, and his record at St. James' Park specifically reads two goals and three assists across his last six home outings there.
Given Everton's susceptibility to conceding first and Newcastle's need for an early foothold against a defence built around Tarkowski's duelling, Barnes's record in front of his own supporters carries extra weight.
Team news adds further uncertainty on both sides
Newcastle remain without Tino Livramento and Ewen Jaouen long-term, though Jaissle could recall Matias Fernandez-Pardo and Lewis Miley for the match, per The Analyst. Moyes confirmed Jarrad Branthwaite will return for the trip to Tyneside, a boost to the defensive resistance that limited Newcastle's pressure in Thursday's cup tie, while Grealish's involvement remains an open question after his omission from the cup win.
Everton arrive with the psychological lift of Thursday's cup win and a quarter-final place secured, but their underlying league numbers, nine winless away games and a habit of conceding first, run directly counter to that confidence. Newcastle's task is to show that last weekend's win over Crystal Palace, rather than their shot-conceding totals from the opening two months, is the truer measure of where they stand.