Upon initial inspection, I actually didn't think Joe Willock had a particularly bad game yesterday. He was busy, put himself about and provided a couple of decent defensive interventions.
But having taken a bit more time to ponder on the game and its outcome, watching some moments and taking a look at a few statistics, I actually think he caused a lot of our problems in yesterday's outing.
It must be noted that this isn't a hit piece, I actually think a lot of the reasoning behind it is because of the role he was asked to play, but nonetheless there are some quite big indicators that he may have impacted the game negatively.
The heat map and distance covered
We'll first take a little look at some of the stats that really accentuate the point.
In terms of distance covered among those who started, Joe Willock covered the least (7.5km) barring Lukas Hornicek (6.2km) and even then he was as close to him as he was to Anthony Elanga (8.7km), who covered the third least of any outfield Newcastle player.
And you might say that was down to the position he was taking up out of possession, in theory dropping onto the deepest Bournemouth midfielder when Wissa pressed and vice versa as they almost occupied a front two.
But, firstly Wissa covered 10km in the match, significantly more than Willock (although he did admittedly play more minutes).
This is also where Joe Willock's heat map comes in we really begin to see the picture.
As provided by FotMob, the map shows that Willock spent the majority of his time not even occupying a central area. In fact his biggest spots show him either in his own half toward the left hand side, or in the opposition corner flag (for some unknown reason).
So what is the point to bringing up these statistics you might ask? Well, I'm about to tell you.
The midfield struggle and Willock's refusal to help
Whether it was a conscious tactical decision by Matthias Jaissle or not, Newcastle United spent the majority of the game being overrun in the midfield areas.
Newcastle's double pivot of Nico Gonzalez and Lewis Miley isn't exactly the most mobile of duos. What that means is, having someone who is going to work hard and provide some legs out of possession is crucial.
However, Joe Willock often wasn't industrial enough to do that off the ball work. Bournemouth were playing a double pivot, with Alex Scott dictating the tempo for the majority of the game and Tyler Adams the one keeping the play ticking.
With Willock often caught out of position, Gonzalez and Miley both faced a dilemma. Either step out and try to close the ball down, leaving space in the gaps for the fleet footed Justin Kluivert to pick up the ball in pockets, or stay put and risk inviting pressure and giving the Bournemouth pair space.
Had Joe Willock been slightly more proactive in closing down the central areas, or even just sitting on the toes of Tyler Adams to take the extra man out of the game, that would have made it much easier to navigate out of possession.
Marco Rose's side looked to compact those central areas and play through the lines, that meant that no matter what there was always likely to be an overload for the Cherries, and that's without the consideration of Willock being astray positionally - that simply made it almost impossible to relieve pressure and win the ball back.
The in possession problem
This again ties to the fact that Willock wasn't often where he should be, and was actually shown up when he went off and Wissa dropped into the 10, with the DR Congo international looking much more lively and likely to create something than his teammate.
In theory, Willock should have been the ball to unlock the Bournemouth press.
Whether it be into his feet from Miley or Gonzalez, or a little dink to surpass the pressure on the backline, he really could have been the most important player in the game.
As it happened, Willock only managed to make two passes into the final third and didn't create any chances either. Add to that the mentioned lack of distance covered and confusing heatmap
Add us as a preferred source on Google