Newcastle United booked their place in the next round of the League Cup with a 4-1 win against Bradford at St. James’ Park on Wednesday night.
The Magpies are, of course, the defending champions of the competition after they beat Liverpool to lift the trophy at Wembley earlier this year.
Eddie Howe’s side were already 3-0 up by the time that the away side grabbed their consolation goal, which meant that the result was never in any serious doubt at any point.
Despite the convincing and comfortable nature of the overall team performance and result, some players did not showcase the best of themselves. Lewis Miley was one of those players.
Why Lewis Miley will be disappointed with his performance
It was a frustrating night for the academy graduate. Not because he was awful from start to finish, but because he let himself down with a few silly errors mixed into an impressive all-round showing.
Miley won six of his nine duels, completed 92% of his attempted passes, and created three chances for his teammates, per Sofascore. This shows that he was strong in his physical contests and creative with the ball at his feet.
However, the England U19 international produced two too many sloppy moments with the ball in his own defensive third, with two errors that led to shots for Bradford, one of which led to a goal.
As you can see in the clip above, Miley tried a risky lofted pass on the edge of his own penalty area and gave the ball away cheaply for Andy Cook’s goal, which was a stunning strike.
The 19-year-old central midfielder was not the worst player on the pitch for the Magpies, though, as it is Emil Krafth who must be ruthlessly ditched by Howe.
Why Newcastle must drop Emil Krafth
The Sweden international was handed a rare chance to impress by the head coach, having not played a single minute of football this season heading into the clash with Bradford.
Krafth, who played 18 times in all competitions in the 2024/25 campaign, did not take that opportunity to show that he deserves more minutes in the first team.
Instead, the rarely-seen 31-year-old defender showed supporters and Howe why he has not had much game time with the Magpies in the last 18 months with an incredibly underwhelming performance against the League One outfit.
Minutes
61
Tackles
0
Interceptions
0
Blocks
0
Ground duels won
0/3
Aerial duels won
0/0
Error led to shot
1
As you can see in the table above, Krafth offered very little to the team out of possession, failing to win a a single duel, and made an error that led to a shot for the opposition.
Playing against a lower league side, in a 4-1 win, at St. James’ Park should have freed up Krafth to push forward and offer a threat as an attacking force, but he ended his time on the pitch without any ‘big chances’ created and only one key pass.
Because of his error that led to a shot for the opposition, the experienced defender created as many chances for Bradford as he did for Newcastle (one) in his 61 minutes on the pitch.
He was even worse than Miley against Bradford because the midfielder, at least, created a ‘big chance’ and won the majority of his duels, which meant that the youngster had good and bad moments. Krafth, meanwhile, did not do enough on or off the ball in the game.
Therefore, Howe must ruthlessly ditch the Swedish flop from the starting XI in order to bring Kieran Trippier or Tino Livramento back into the side to face Arsenal in the Premier League on Sunday.
