Manchester United vs Newcastle United preview – can Mourinho turn things around?

After another gloomy week for the Red Devils, what must Jose Mourinho and his lacklustre side need to do in order to turn things around in the Premier League?

It turns out things could get worse after all.

After back-to-back defeats to Brighton & Hove Albion and Tottenham Hotspur, we thought we’d seen it all. Now United are in even deeper trouble after last week’s dreadful 3-1 loss to West Ham United, which saw Jose Mourinho’s side sink to 10th place – nine points behind Manchester City and Liverpool.

Do Manchester United have what it takes to turn things around against Newcastle United?

Rafa Benitez’s side currently sit in 18th place after picking up just 2 points from their opening 7 matches. However, the Spaniard can somewhat be forgiven for the Magpies’ poor start to the season given they had to face Tottenham, Chelsea, Manchester City and Arsenal in those games.

United will be hoping to make it a fifth consecutive loss against a top 6 side for Newcastle – but what has to change?

Who needs to step up for United?

An easy target would be the headline-grabbing Paul Pogba. However, I would urge United fans to lay off the world-cup winner as he seems to be the only one trying to put together anything that resembles an attack in this side for the last few games.

One could also ask if Antonio Valencia is justifying his continued presence in the starting XI ahead of promising new signing Diogo Dalot given how little the Ecuadorian has contributed to the teams attacking output so-far this season.

Ultimately it is Mourinho who has to find his best XI, and if United can’t manage to put together a win on Saturday, he will have to take the blame.

Who do United need to look out for in this Newcastle side?

Defenders Federico Fernandez and Paul Dummett could make a return to Benitez’s side after missing their defeat to Leicester City last week due to hamstring injuries and could cause Romelu Lukaku some problems.

However, Newcastle’s own number 9 Solomon Rondon is still out due to a thigh injury, meaning they may struggle to test United’s back line.

Nevertheless, we will still need to watch out for Joselu and DeAndre Yedlin who have 3 goals between them so far this season and can be tricky to play against at times.

What Mourinho had to say ahead of the game

In his pre-match press conference, the Special One shared his thoughts on his side’s current form:

"“I know we are at the beginning of October and in many of the league tables around Europe in September and October, they don’t reflect what is going to happen a few months later or at the end of the season.“We are in a position that we can do much better than that and to do that we need points. Especially after the points we lost in the last two Premier League matches with one point out of six. We know that to improve that position we need to win these three points [against Newcastle].” [manutd.com]"

Mourinho also had this to say about the opposition:

"“We know that our opponents, for different reasons, also need the points. They have a very, very, very good coach [Benitez].“They are a team that is always very well organised, especially against the teams in the first part of the table, where their manager is very bright in his analysis of the opponents’ qualities and trying to stop them. The results they had against the top teams didn’t get them points yet this season, but they gave them very close results and very difficult matches for the opposition. So, we expect that. We expect a difficult match.” [manutd.com]"

Will Mourinho’s men show enough passion to breeze past the Magpies? Who knows. One thing is for certain – anything less than 3 points on Saturday would spell deep trouble for Mourinho’s tenure at Old Trafford.