£124m Spent and Newcastle Still Cannot Solve Their Striker Crisis

At Selhurst Park last weekend, Newcastle's two most expensive attacking recruits combined for precisely zero touches of consequence. Yoane Wissa entered in stoppage time and did not get near the ball. Nick Woltemade lasted eight minutes as a substitute and left no impression on a match that Palace had already taken by the scruff of the neck. Crystal Palace's Jean-Philippe Mateta, wearing Newcastle's number nine shirt after swapping with his former Chateauroux team-mate Wissa, had already won it with a dramatic late double. The contrast between the two men in the same shirt number was almost too neat to be accidental.

The result, a 2-1 defeat, dropped Newcastle to 14th place in the Premier League and intensified questions about Eddie Howe's future. But the more pressing long-term concern for the club is not the result itself. It is the pattern that produced it, a pattern that has repeated throughout what has been a deeply uncomfortable season.

Seven months after Alexander Isak pushed through a British record £125m move to Liverpool, Newcastle still do not have a striker they can trust to start and lead the line week after week. That is a sobering conclusion given the size of the investment made to address it.

An Impossible Replacement, and a Complicated Summer

Nobody inside St James' Park expected replacing Isak to be straightforward. The word used internally, according to reports, was "impossible." Isak had been one of the Premier League's most complete forwards, combining pace, technical precision, and an ability to lead a high press. When Callum Wilson also departed, Newcastle needed two strikers rather than one, and needed them quickly in a window that was already running out of time.

The recruitment process was far from smooth. Newcastle operated without a sporting director and chief executive for significant stretches of the summer. They missed out on Joao Pedro, Hugo Ekitike, and Benjamin Sesko before landing Woltemade from Stuttgart for £69m and Wissa from Brentford for £55m. Both signings arrived with genuine credentials. Woltemade had attracted interest from Bayern Munich. Wissa had finished last season as one of the Premier League's most clinical forwards, scoring more non-penalty goals than any forward outside Mohamed Salah at Liverpool. On paper, the logic was defensible. In practice, the outcomes have been far messier.

Wissa arrived without a proper pre-season having pushed to leave Brentford, then suffered a knee injury on international duty with DR Congo within days of completing his move. He scored in each of his first two starts, which briefly suggested the gamble might pay off quickly, but has found the net only once since. The absence of pre-season work matters more than it might sound: forwards who miss that conditioning period routinely take three or four months longer to find their rhythm in a new environment, and Wissa has had none of the gradual integration that helps a player absorb a new club's patterns of play. Woltemade's trajectory was more encouraging early on, with five goals in his first six starts giving Newcastle reason for optimism. That momentum, however, has slowed considerably.

The System Problem Nobody Is Talking About Enough

There is a tendency in coverage of Newcastle's forward line to focus exclusively on what the strikers are or are not doing. But the structure Howe has historically favoured raises legitimate questions about whether his system is capable of getting the best from either Wissa or Woltemade. Howe's approach has typically demanded a rapid, physically aggressive forward who can stretch defences in behind and anchor a high press. That profile suited Isak almost perfectly. It is a significantly less comfortable fit for the more technical, measured Woltemade, who honed his game in the Bundesliga rather than the relentless physical theatre of the Premier League. Where Isak would instinctively hold a defensive line and invite the press to begin around him, Woltemade tends to drop into pockets and link play, which can disrupt the very pressing triggers Howe's system relies on to function at its best.

The coaching staff were reportedly frustrated by a lack of time to develop Woltemade's work in the final third. Their response has been curious: in the absence of injured captain Bruno Guimaraes, Woltemade has increasingly been deployed deeper in midfield rather than in the attacking position where his goals came. That decision may reflect a genuine tactical need, but it also means Newcastle are spending £69m of attacking investment on someone filling a midfield void. There is something structurally misaligned about that arrangement, and it is one the club will need to resolve rather than paper over as the season continues.

Osula's Recall and What It Actually Reveals

Against Palace, Howe's starting choice was telling. William Osula, not Wissa, was given the nod through the middle and scored Newcastle's goal. Osula is not a player signed for £55m with Premier League experience and international pedigree. He is a young forward working his way into the reckoning. The fact that Howe selected him ahead of Wissa was not simply a tactical preference. Howe made clear he does not select based on transfer fees but on what he observes in training. That is admirable in principle, yet it also suggests that, behind the scenes, Wissa is not yet convincing his manager that he deserves consistent trust. A forward of Wissa's profile needs to feel the unconditional confidence of his manager during a difficult settling-in period; without it, the hesitancy on the pitch tends to compound rather than correct.

The broader squad picture compounds the problem. Of Newcastle's five outfield summer additions, only Malick Thiaw started at Selhurst Park. Jacob Ramsey and Anthony Elanga, both brought in to strengthen the attacking third, were named among the substitutes alongside Wissa and Woltemade. Howe did not turn to any of them even as Palace grew stronger in the second half, and even after Jefferson Lerma's header struck the crossbar as a clear warning. It was Palace's Oliver Glasner who showed the proactive substitution instinct that changed the match. Howe's reluctance to act in those moments has become one of the more consistent criticisms of his management this season.

A Pattern of Points Left Behind

The Palace defeat was not an isolated collapse. It fits into a worrying trend that has defined Newcastle's campaign. No Premier League club has surrendered more points from winning positions than Newcastle's 25. That is a structural failing, not bad luck, and it is one that cutting-edge recruitment alone will not fix. The fact that Newcastle have scored more first-half goals than every side except Manchester City this season only makes the pattern more frustrating. The quality is evidently there in the opening 45 minutes. Something changes after the interval, in terms of intensity, press efficiency, and the capacity to push for a second goal before the opposition regroups. That drop-off points to a problem with how the team is set up to manage games, not merely with the individuals playing in them.

Howe acknowledged the difficulty of his position when he noted that "sometimes personnel is the only thing that changes something," while simultaneously insisting his squad is strong enough. Those two statements sit in tension with each other. If the personnel can change things, why were Wissa, Woltemade, Ramsey, and Elanga kept waiting while Palace turned the game around?

Verdict: A Club at a Crossroads It Has Not Yet Acknowledged

Newcastle's striker situation is not simply a matter of two expensive signings needing more time. It reflects something deeper: a club that lost its best player, struggled to recruit coherently in the window that followed, and has not yet found a tactical framework that suits the players it does have. Wissa's lack of pre-season and early injury disrupted any chance of building momentum. Woltemade's repositioning into midfield solves one short-term problem while creating another. And Osula's recall, however meritorious, is more a symptom of uncertainty than a long-term answer.

There is a reasonable case that Woltemade, given an uninterrupted run in his natural position as the schedule lightens, could yet deliver the returns that justified the fee. His 23 percent shot conversion rate, among those with at least 30 attempts in the Premier League, remains genuinely impressive and suggests the finishing ability is there when the opportunities arrive. Wissa, too, has shown enough in a Brentford shirt to suggest he is capable of far more than he has produced so far in black and white. But potential is not points, and right now Newcastle are haemorrhaging both.

The question heading into the visit of Bournemouth on Saturday is not just who starts up front. It is whether Howe and his coaching staff have identified what actually needs to change, not in personnel, but in how they manage games, use substitutes, and build a system around the specific players available rather than the theoretical ideal they have been chasing since Isak walked out the door.

Sources: Match information, statistics, and quotes sourced from BBC Sport's coverage of Newcastle United's 2024-25 Premier League season.