Newcastle were able to scrounge past AFC Wimbledon 1-0 in the League Cup in their mid-week fixture, making it their first win in a couple of weeks since notching three straight major victories over Wolves, Tottenham, and Nottingham Forest.
Currently, Newcastle sit seventh in the Premier League table, which is a little further back than their goal finish. They qualified for the Champions League with a top-four finish in the 2022/23 season, and after missing out on the top four last season, they’d clearly like to get back.
Newcastle are behind Aston Villa and Fulham in fifth and sixth, respectively, and Chelsea are currently occupying the fourth and final Champions League slot with a fierce resurgence under Enzo Maresca.
If Newcastle are to get back to the Champions League, they will need a number of key players to step up and play their best this season, and perhaps nobody is more important as an X-Factor than their star center back Fabian Schar.
The defense is what lifted Newcastle to the Champions League a couple of seasons ago, and Schar was one of the best defenders in European football, producing monsterclasses in marking while passing at a high level.
This season, Schar has done a great job of reading the game and has put in some clean performances, but his overall game hasn’t been impactful enough for a legitimately world-class veteran.
He is completing under 85 percent of his passes, which is well below average. Furthermore, Schar isn’t even averaging 0.5 tackles per game, and while his game his based more on reading rather than intervening, Newcastle should ask the Swiss international to be more proactive.
Newcastle have other center back talents, including free agent summer signing Lloyd Kelly. But they have suffered great losses at center back to injury, namely Schar’s 2022/23 center back partner Sven Botman.
The best version of Schar is honestly capable of rivaling Virgil van Dijk as the best center back in the league, and if Newcastle are to get back to the Champions League, they will need to see one last run at that level from their experienced center half.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. His work has been featured in ESPN, Bleacher Report, Yahoo! Sports, NBC Sports, and other major outlets. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.