Sandro Tonali turns power on for Newcastle to light mid-season spark
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Decision to move midfielder into deeper position has paid off to reignite hopes of Champions League qualification. Eddie Howe kept flicking switches and pressing buttons but the power refused to do anything more than blink sporadically into life before swiftly fading once more. Newcastle had slipped to 12th in the Premier League and, with José Mourinho said to be on friendly terms with the Saudi Arabian-owned club’s chair, Yasir al-Rumayyan, Howe’s hold on the manager’s job looked to have loosened slightly.
![[Louise Taylor]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2017/10/09/Louise-Taylor,-L.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Then Sandro Tonali turned the lights back on and everything changed. A month after Howe decided to deploy the Italy midfielder in a deep-lying No6 role in a 1-1 draw at Crystal Palace, Newcastle have risen to fifth. With Champions League qualification suddenly back on the agenda, they travel to Old Trafford for Monday night’s match against Manchester United having scored 11 goals while keeping a trio of clean sheets in their past three league games.
![[Sandro Tonali celebrates scoring against Brentford in the Carabao Cup]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/42cf53a076e7d84e2863f04f0524894482061a22/0_0_4266_2998/master/4266.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
In the seven matches since Howe told Bruno Guimarães to vacate his preferred No 6 brief and shift forward into a No 8 position that had failed to showcase properly Tonali’s match-shaping qualities, Newcastle have lost only once. Perhaps not coincidentally, that league defeat, at Brentford, came on a day when Howe opted to rotate and started with the former Milan playmaker on the bench.
When Newcastle finished fourth in 2022-23, they played the sort of high-intensity pressing game that frequently blew opponents away but demanded that feet needed to remain rammed to the accelerator for unfeasibly long periods. Ultimately, Howe’s injury-ravaged team seemed to burn out and limped towards a seventh-place finish last season.
