Newcastle v Liverpool: Can Matthais Jaissle Revive The Magpies?
Newcastle finished 12th last season on 49 points, and 49 is not the number that explains the year. Seventeen is. They lost 17 of their 38 league games. Only the bottom three lost more often. Tottenham lost 17 as well and came 17th.
The other half of the split is stranger. Newcastle drew seven times, and only Arsenal and Fulham drew as few. Arsenal drew seven and won the league by seven points. Newcastle drew seven and finished 12th, because the games they did not draw broke the wrong way.
Newcastle turned 38 games into 31 wins and defeats last season, which is why the Newcastle vs Liverpool odds at Betfair are a harder read than a meeting between the sides who finished 12th and fifth ought to be.
Twenty of the 38 went to a single goal
Twelve of the 17 defeats were by one goal. Eight of the 14 wins were as well. 20 of Newcastle’s 38 games were settled by a single goal, and another seven were not settled at all, which leaves 11 matches in the whole season anyone could call comfortable.
The margins that were not narrow ran in both directions. Newcastle’s best afternoon was a 4-1 win at Everton on 29 November. Their heaviest defeat was a 4-1 at Anfield on 31 January. They failed to score in nine games and reached three goals in five.
Nor did any of it come in useful runs. Newcastle never went more than four league games without losing. Their longest winning run was three, between 30 December and 7 January, and they lost four in a row between 22 March and 25 April.
32 of Newcastle’s 49 points came at St James’ Park. 17 came from everywhere else, out of four wins in 19 away games.
The goals against column is the part worth staring at. Newcastle conceded 30 at home and 25 away, so the ground where they took two thirds of their points is also where they gave up more of the goals.
What Jaissle actually brings
New Newcastle boss Matthias Jaissle, 38, signed a four-year deal on 6 August, and Newcastle paid £9.5m to Al-Ahli to release him. The record behind that fee is a strong one. At Salzburg he won 64 games, drew 18 and lost 10, took two Austrian titles and a domestic cup, and became the first coach to carry the club past the Champions League group stage.
At Al-Ahli he won 92, drew 21 and lost 25, and won the Asian Champions League in successive seasons.
In an interview with Sky Sports, he described what he intends to do with it: “My football is front-footed, aggressive, vertical in our approach – I think that’s a perfect fit to Newcastle.”
He may well be right about the fit. What the record cannot tell anyone is what that football does to a team already losing close to half its games. Across 230 matches at Salzburg and Al-Ahli, Jaissle lost 35.
What Sunday 23 August tests
Jaissle’s first Premier League game is Liverpool at St James’ Park on Sunday 23 August. Eddie Howe resigned this summer, Bruno Guimaraes has gone to Arsenal and the likes of Sandro Tonali and Anthony Gordon have also left the club, so a quality part of that squad that lost 17 games will not be in the eleven that walks out.
Liverpool are a useful opponent for this particular question. They lost nine of their 19 away games last season and took 24 points on the road, so they arrive as a side that can be beaten away from home, and as the side that beat Newcastle twice in 2025-26.
Newcastle open in the same round as everybody else, and the Premier League odds at Betfair cover all of it. What sets this fixture apart is that form is not the question being asked. Newcastle had 14 good days last season. They had 17 bad ones.
