The Athletic FC

Welcome to the Athletic FFC podcast with me, Ayot Akim Oleri.

Life after Alexander Isak has been hit and missed for Newcastle.

But in Nick Volta-Marda, have they already found the key to their success this season?

All right, let's get into this, because with me today, we've got Chris Woff. We've also got

Olli K as well. Chris, we have to start with a 3-0 win over Benfica in the Champions League.

I mean, wow, what an emphatic win in the end, some great moments, some great assists and also contrasting the league form. Champions League seems to be quite fruitful for Newcastle at the moment. Yeah, I'm pleased you picked a day to get me on because over the last six months, most of the time you brought me on post-cup final. It's been fairly miserable in terms of talking about Newcastle and I had. and it would have been even if we'd been speaking on Monday rather than on Wednesday but yeah big win for Newcastle on the Champions League back to back victories in that competition for them seven goals scored non-conceded puts them now in a fairly strong position to hopefully progress into the latter stages of the competition which really they need to do they couldn't get out of the so-called group of death two years ago when it

was the old format and they had sort of European heavyweights of A.C. Milan, Paris-Sangerman and

Borussia Dortmund, which was the glamour ties, but actually meant the Newcastle-finished

bottom of the group in the end. So slightly unluckily, but this time, the focus is on

progressing and to have had Union Sanjouis away away. And then also Benfico, all those times have come at a very nice moment. And the hope is that they can start to translate some of the form, particularly the goal scoring form of their wingers, from the Champions League into the Premier League, because they are struggling in that regard. Yeah, I've got to say, though, Benfica looked like they were up for it, especially in the

first half in general.

But it's great to see Newcastle really finding their feet, especially some great assists and saves

from Nick Pope as well.

Yeah, the Pope assist his first ever in professional football, more than 400 games.

And he really struggles with his feet.

And the irony is that even during the

game last night against benfica at one point he was under such pressure he felt himself under

such pressure that he managed to kick the ball out for a corner to benfica so he does struggle

with his feet but he has always been very good at distributing actually with his hands this was

remarkable i've never really seen anything live like this, where actually Newcastle played Arsenal a few weeks ago, and Pope took a lot of criticism afterwards because he tried to play out when it was 1-1, and Newcastle were trying to search for a winner when Arsenal had come back into it. And Pope took a lot of flack for not managing the game correctly. at this point it was was a slightly different game moment. Boney 1-0 up. They really needed a second goal to kill the tie-off. And it's something that spoke to Harvey Barnes afterwards. He said, we didn't practice this. Eddie Howard made it afterwards. It's not something we've ever really done before. Pope manages to launch the ball into the opposition half. Benfica defender misses the ball. Bonds goes through

and it's actually a really wonderful finish from Barnes which gets overlooked a little bit because of

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