The Premier League has never been faster. Matches have never been longer. Newcastle United simply could not afford to stand still.
So bringing in a performance director like James Bunce seems like another important step following the appointment of his former colleague Paul Mitchell as sporting director last week. Bunce certainly has a wealth of experience in the field. Bunce not only worked as performance director at Monaco and as head of athletic development at Southampton, but also as head of elite performance at the Premier League and as high performance director at US Soccer.
In his most recent role as a consultant, Bunce set out to: improve staff performance and output; support the audit of clubs and departments to find areas for improvement; develop the advancement of ‘physical development curricula’ to optimise the physical performance of players and clubs; and support clubs with infrastructure development.
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It’s not hard to imagine Bunce doing the same at Newcastle in the coming years and bringing a fresh perspective, just as he did in his last role at the club, Monaco. At the very least, this is a much better situation to come into.
After all, before Mitchell, Bunce and co. arrived and Niko Kovac was appointed manager, Monaco were 10th in the league for total distance covered, high-speed runs and accelerations. These were clearly average figures for a Ligue 1 team, but even more daunting in the context of Europe’s top five leagues.
Among the teams in the Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A and Ligue 1, Monaco ranked 76th for total distance covered, 85th for high-speed running and 88th for accelerations. In one year, Monaco surprisingly ranked third for sprint distance, high-speed running and total distance covered.
They signed up young, athletic players (sound familiar?) and those who came through the youth ranks, such as Aurelien Tchouameni, shone. The future Real Madrid star once said: “Compared to other teams, we are physically superior. That allows us to win games.”
Newcastle players have had similar feelings at various times, notably when the Magpies qualified for the Champions League in 2023. Even last season, according to Opta, only three Premier League teams had a better PPDA figure than Newcastle (10.7) when it came to pressing intensity. That was also the case when Newcastle broke into the top four.
However, Newcastle’s pressing sequences (458) fell from third to 13th in 2023-24, while the number of high turnovers (311) dropped three places to eighth. These are the sort of numbers Howe will want to improve, but they simply reflect the intense demands of last season, when Newcastle were fighting on four fronts with an injury-plagued squad. Indeed, Newcastle players were sidelined for more days (1,950) than any other top-flight club, according to Premier Injuries, while only Manchester United and Chelsea had more injuries than the Magpies (41).
Newcastle have suffered a number of unexpected injuries but Howe was the first to admit that some of the absences were due to “over-loading or maybe our programmes weren’t good enough in the gym”. “If we’re sitting here and playing and we haven’t made any mistakes, I think we’re being silly,” admitted the Newcastle manager.
Bunce has experience in this field and Monaco’s work with former defender Benoit Badiashile is a good example of this. Badiashile had already suffered some niggles at Monaco and has since suffered at Chelsea, but the club’s staff worked closely with him in the gym and had him lift weights, train harder and do extra exercises to strengthen him. That hard work paid off for both Badiashile and Monaco; the centre-back’s performances eventually earned him a £35m move to Chelsea and a huge profit for the Principality for an academy graduate.
From a group perspective, even when Monaco were knocked out of the cups or Europe, the staff ran double sessions in midweek to keep up the pace and ensure the players could play two games a week. Howe did not have similar time on the pitch last season, when the Newcastle boss was able to train the players at full speed, but that will change this season.
Newcastle, as in the 2022-23 season, will have more time on training pitches and more time to recover between games. While missing out on European qualification was undoubtedly a blow, it could prove significant.
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