Carragher says Newcastle were “beaten up” again. Craig Hope wrote the better column, Carragher gave the better advice

Newcastle went to the CBS Arena on Monday night, had 19 shots, created three big chances and lost 4-1 to a Coventry side that had scored once in their previous five Premier League games. Two of the sharpest verdicts arrived before midnight, and they could hardly be more different in tone.

On Monday Night Football, Jamie Carragher kept it physical: “In their last two away games, they’ve been beaten up twice, and that’s got to stop very quickly,” he told Sky Sports. In the Daily Mail, Craig Hope went moral, under a headline telling Manchester City that Coventry had shown them “what a win built on honesty and grit looks like”. Both are worth hearing. Only one of them tells Matthias Jaissle what to do on Saturday.

Hope’s sermon, and his best line

Hope’s column opens as a dig at City and the financial rule breaches they have been found guilty of: “This win was pure, never to be contested in a court of law or the court of public opinion.” It is a good line in a week dominated by City’s guilty verdict, and it lands with a nice irony he does not mention. Coventry’s fourth goal was scored by Stephen Mfuni, an 18-year-old on loan from Manchester City, who became the club’s youngest Premier League scorer.

The column is better when it stays on the pitch. Hope has an eye for the moment that turned the night. Lukas Hornicek, he writes, “looked like he was gathering a bar of soap” when Ephron Mason-Clark’s low shot squirmed through his hands, and the Czech goalkeeper’s recovery dive brought down Sidiki Cherif for Jack Rudoni’s sixth-minute penalty. By the end the home crowd were singing “You’ve seen the City, now **** off home”, and plenty of the away end took the advice.

His sharpest judgement is about Newcastle’s £51million striker. Matias Fernandez-Pardo, Hope says, “does not look nor play like a Premier League centre-forward. At least not yet.” He wants Jaissle to “ignore the wishes of the player”, who reportedly asked to play through the middle when he joined from Lille, and pick someone else.

Carragher’s fix

Carragher arrives at the same place by a more practical route. He started with the numbers he says the show has been pointing to all season: “They’ve had a good start results-wise, but the underlying numbers haven’t been great. How many shots they concede, their xG. You look at two away games now where they’ve lost 8-2.”

Then the shape. “He’s going with two strikers up there; I know Wissa drops a little bit deeper, but when Eddie Howe was there it was more of a 4-3-3,” he said. “When you think of the lack of physicality in that team, it might be a case where you leave one of the strikers out and go with an extra body in midfield. It’s a young team, and it isn’t as physically powerful as a lot of the teams in the Premier League.”

Sky Sports News’ Keith Downie went further: “There was more evidence tonight that Yoane Wissa is not a No 10, Joe Willock is not a No 6, and Matias Fernandez-Pardo is not a No 9.” Three players, three wrong positions. That is a team picked around preferences rather than a plan.

The game backs the pundits, not the scoreline

On paper Newcastle had the better of it. Sky’s report says they had more than double Coventry’s touches in the opposition box. But look at how the goals came. A goalkeeping error for the penalty. A long throw headed only to the edge of the area by Malick Thiaw, and Cherif, 19, left time to drive in the second. A Joelinton error for Ellis Simms’ third, three minutes and 15 seconds after he came off the bench. Frank Lampard summed it up: “We were really good at the basics. Those actions are critical to the modern Premier League. It’s not all pretty patterns.”

Newcastle lost the second balls and the duels, which is exactly what Carragher means by “beaten up”. It is also why the numbers are so stark. This is the first time since December 2012 that Newcastle have conceded four or more in back-to-back Premier League away games, Sky notes, and only Bournemouth and Chelsea have let in as many league goals. Jaissle himself said that conceding eight in two away games “is not good enough for the Premier League”.

Our verdict

Hope wrote the better column; Carragher gave the better advice. “Honesty and grit” is a fine description of Coventry, but it tells Newcastle nothing they can coach. Carragher’s point is specific and checkable: one striker out, one midfielder in, back towards the 4-3-3 Newcastle played under Howe. Read alongside Hope’s verdict on Fernandez-Pardo, the change almost picks itself. The £51million striker goes to the bench, the midfield gets a third body, and Wissa is left to play off one centre-forward rather than pretend to be a No 10. Jaissle’s apology to the travelling fans was the right instinct. His next team sheet will show whether he was listening to Monday Night Football too.

Carragher has been busy this week. Read our take on his row with Daniel Sturridge over Florian Wirtz.

Sources: Sky Sports, Daily Mail.