As a Newcastle United fan, before a ball was kicked this season would you have settled for finishing above Manchester United, Aston Villa, Spurs and Sunderland after the 38th round of 2026/27 Premier League matches are completed?
On Monday morning these are four of the nine Premier League clubs occupying positions 12th to 20th in the table.
In 27 attempts between Manchester United, Aston Villa, Spurs and Sunderland so far this season, they have won four of the 27 Premier League matches. Indeed, one of their four collective victories was Villa winning at Tottenham.
Newcastle United are currently ahead of all four of these teams in the Premier League table, plus another five.
If how the Premier League table looks now (see below), was still the same after the final matches in May 2027, then I am guessing most Newcastle fans would be currently settling for that. Right?
Certainly judging by the air of despondency that appears to be hanging around at the moment.
My point isn’t to pretend that everything is great at Newcastle United, it is simply a reality check that many other Premier League teams are in similar positions. Their fans questioning what is happening and where they will end up by the end of the season.
It has very quickly become apparent that with very rare exceptions you wouldn’t be surprised if any Premier League team lost to another. Every point has to be battled for. Indeed, even the two dominant Premier League clubs of last season, who are up there again, Arsenal lucky to get a late deflected goal to scramble a win against Forest who are in the bottom three, whilst Manchester City had to cling on 3-2 at home to recently promoted Ipswich on Saturday.
I think only the very harshest of critics wouldn’t accept that Newcastle United were a club who could have been expected to struggle early this 2026/27 season.
United were the last club to appoint the manager who would lead them into the new season, only 18 days before the 2026/27 campaign kicked off. The new Newcastle boss ending up with a massively changed squad that had lost many of its best and most experienced stars, with mostly inexperienced young kids coming in from overseas. So little time for Matthias Jaissle to get the team/squad ready and then Newcastle United hit by the worst early season injury crisis of any Premier League club, with nine ruled out!
So many key players have missed so many matches and ahead of the defeat to Aston Villa, Matthias Jaissle stated that even though a number of players had come back to the matchday squad for Coventry (and Aston Villa), they were still at least a couple of weeks away from full fitness. I think we saw that clearly with Joelinton on Saturday, he did start but looked nowhere near 100%.
I look back at that first week of the season and the likes of Osula, Wissa and Elanga were flying, combining so well. The opening minutes of the season saw a stunning break at pace as Osula and Elanga tore Liverpool apart and the former Forest winger put United ahead.
Osula got injured in that match and hasn’t been able to start a game since.
The following weekend we saw Elanga and Wissa cause Spurs all kinds of problems despite missing Osula, the pair of them scoring excellent goals. Before we knew it Elanga was then ruled out due to an injury in training.
If that trio had been able to carry on playing together then I think we would be in a far better place now. That is even before you get to the fact that the likes of Burn, Joelinton, Dedic, Jaouen, Gonzalez, Livramento, Ramsey have all missed so many matches between them.
I think at the very least you have to give this Newcastle United Head Coach and his players the chance to get something like a first choice fully fit team on the pitch before you start judging them.
Let’s see where we are at after 19 Premier League matches and have played all of the other teams.
The Premier League table on the morning of Monday 19 October 2026
As you can see, only six of the 20 Premier League clubs have won more than two matches so far.