In case of black and white emergency, break the glass and throw Dan Burn up front.
Six games in are we already in panic territory for Newcastle United? Even for those of us who’d argue for patience and calm heads as faith in the “2.0 project” begins to ebb, hurling Burn on as a battering ram for six injury-time minutes felt very much like a desperate move from Matthias Jaissle as the game drained away against Aston Villa.
Don’t get it twisted, Newcastle are desperate for a player of Burn’s character and desire right now. But if Jaissle really is the tactical auteur he was made out to be in the summer, surely he should be nowhere near the forward line of a team that is meant to be about front-foot, aggressive and attacking play.
Jaissle could argue that he had little to do with the recruitment that has seen Newcastle spend £179m on forwards to replace Alexander Isak and have so little to show for it.
Yoane Wissa, after a brief flicker at the start of this season, was dreadful in Saturday night’s 1-0 defeat to Villa. Nick Woltemade is struggling after being exiled to Italy on loan, while Matias Fernandez-Pardo (and I maintain there is something there, despite a difficult start) has been shifted to the wing already.
Will Osula – now anointed as Newcastle’s main striker – is returning from injury and a year ago was miles off it. It is seriously worrying that of the 14 goals the Magpies have scored this season, just one has come from a recognised striker (Wissa at Tottenham).
But the biggest criticism you could level at Jaissle right now is that his tactics and selections are actually diminishing the group rather than making it more than the sum of its parts.
Of course there should be worries about how little the new arrivals are impacting things. Sean Steur, Amar Dedic and Aladji Bamba didn’t get off the bench here while Bazoumana Toure got 34 minutes (replacing Fernandez-Pardo). All were heralded as “match ready” when signed in the summer.
But what chance do Newcastle have if Jaissle refuses to shift from his principles and continues to pursue a system which has produced football chaos and a team that look wide open and far too easy to play through?
Belatedly he did change it up against Villa, going to what looked like a 4-4-2 as Newcastle chased the game at St James’ Park. But it looked ill-thought out and a bit of a desperate swing from a manager who has to spend the next week trying out something different from the fraying “vertical football” philosophy that has now delivered three defeats from four games.
If the second half turned the focus on how powder puff they are going forward, the first half was a thudding reminder of just how defensively porous they are.
Twice they had been cut through by Villa before Johan Manzambi was granted the freedom of St James’ Park to nod past the unconvincing Lukas Hornicek.
Manzambi, of course, was a priority target for Newcastle in the summer but chose Villa. You could see here why they coveted him so much. The Magpies could really do with someone of his attacking intent.
You wonder where things go next. There has been supreme confidence at St James’ Park that things will go to plan and the faith in Jaissle has been absolute. The noises in the summer were that it wouldn’t matter that he was coming in so late, such was his talent and the strength of the recruitment.
But that confidence has collided with cold, hard Premier League reality. Whatever the merits of the “2.0 project” – and there is little doubt Newcastle had to pivot to something different given the challenges they face – they also need to find a way to win football matches.
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A big part of that now comes down to Jaissle. He can persevere with what he’s doing, gamble that his ideas are the right way and cash in if things get better. Or he can become a pragmatist, tweak things to make Newcastle more difficult to beat and try and grind his way through this patch of trouble. The first route is risky – just ask Ruben Amorim.
It is early days. But what he does next will tell us a lot about what Jaissle is made of.