Barnes is solid in short debut, Villa's midfield shows off skills, Anderson makes case for playing time: Things we learned as Aston Villa and Newcastle play to 3-3 goal-fest
The thrills and spills of the Premier League Summer Series continued as Newcastle and Aston Villa shared six goals in Philadelphia, taking the total to 18 across the opening three matches.
Our man CRAIG HOPE was at Lincoln Financial Field to bring you his five talking points…
TRIAL AND ERROR?
Eddie Howe trialled a new 3-4-2-1 formation for the first time. And it could be the last. They were 2-0 down inside 11 minutes and it should have been more, so open were they in the full-back areas. There were some quizzical looks being exchanged among the back three in the wake of Villa’s second goal, for it all felt incredibly easy.
It also raised eyebrows that, on the day Newcastle spent £38million on winger Harvey Barnes, they shelved the 4-3-3 system that includes two widemen. These things have to be experimented with during pre-season, of course, but Howe could well be filing this one under ‘misadventure’.
Or, on reflection, was it all a cunning ploy to confuse Villa, who they face on the opening day of the Premier League season?
POWER TOOLS…
Villa are powerful. John McGinn, Douglas Luiz and Emiliano Buendia ran all over Newcastle’s central-midfield pair of Sandro Tonali and Bruno Guimaraes early on. The Magpies were crying out for the physicality of Joelinton.
But Villa were impressive. Buendia shrugged off Tonali on halfway before driving forward and laying on the opening goal for Ollie Watkins. The provider turned scorer soon after when Luiz clipped a clever ball into one of several spaces in between Newcastle’s defenders, allowing Buendia to slam past Martin Dubrvaka at his near post.
The Argentine was fantastic throughout. He is robust, tricky and industrious. He made it 3-2 to his side early in the second half with a
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