Carl Rushworth, Coventry City’s goalkeeper, hit it long. Jay Dasilva, their left wing-back, ran onto it and scored: the club’s first Premier League goal since the Morocco international Mustapha Hadji’s in May 2001.

The pass bypassed Nottingham Forest’s midfield altogether. It is the detail Matthias Jaissle will have circled this week, because making midfields uncomfortable is what his Newcastle United are built to do, and Coventry have just shown one way around it.

On Monday night, the two sides meet for the first time in the Premier League at the Coventry Building Society Arena. So do their managers.

Two coaches, one shared habit

Jaissle is 38 and a product of the Red Bull school. His pitch to Tyneside has been consistent since the summer: counter-press, attack vertically, win the ball high. “I want stress on the opponent as soon as possible,” he has said. He starts from a 4-2-3-1 but reshapes it by the state of the game, a flexibility he has said he developed at Al-Ahli, where the squad profile was very different from his Salzburg days.

Frank Lampard, the former Chelsea and England midfielder, is 48 and arrived at Coventry in November 2024 with the club hovering near the Championship relegation places. He took them up as champions, with 95 points and 97 league goals. He began with a back four, moved to a back three, and now sends out a back three with wing-backs, a 3-4-3 on the team sheet at Forest.

At Forest, injuries left him without his first-choice right wing-back, so he put the midfielder Caleb Yirenkyi there and it worked. “My job is to be pretty practical,” Lampard said after promotion.

That is the contrast. Jaissle arrives with a method and a squad built by someone else. Lampard is adjusting a promotion-winning group to a harder league one week at a time. Neither is dogmatic, which makes the shape of the game hard to call.

Where Coventry’s goals went

Ninety-seven league goals last season. One in five Premier League games this season.

Haji Wright, the striker who scored 17 league goals last season, is out until November at best with what Lampard calls an awkward injury. Striker Taiwo Awoniyi, signed from Forest in August, was sent off for violent conduct in the 5-0 home defeat by Brighton. He served the first match of his ban in the Carabao Cup loss to Aston Villa and missed the trip to his old club. Monday is the last of the three.

So forward Brandon Thomas-Asante leads the line again, a selection that raised eyebrows at Forest and then worked. Coventry have not scored at home yet, but they now know what a Premier League win feels like, and that changes a dressing room.

What Newcastle can lean on

Pace, first of all. The 2-0 win at Tottenham came from second-half goals by Anthony Elanga and Yoane Wissa. Against Hull, Joe Willock and Lewis Hall had Newcastle two up inside seven minutes. Jaissle’s side start games on the front foot, and the deadline-day arrival of Matias Fernandez-Pardo from Lille gives him a forward he describes as quick, strong and versatile.

Then there is what Coventry lack. A side that has scored once, with its two main strikers unavailable, is easier to defend against than the 97-goal team of last season, and Newcastle’s wide players, Harvey Barnes in particular, will test a right-hand side that Lampard is still patching.

And there are the returners. Nico González and Joelinton are back in contention after missing the Hull win. Neither is a confirmed starter, or even a confirmed matchday squad member, but if Jaissle can use them, their legs in front of the back four are the most direct answer to the problem that follows.

The numbers Newcastle cannot ignore

Eight points from five games reads well. The underlying figures read less comfortably.

Going into the Hull game, Newcastle had faced more shots than any other side in the division. Fantasy Football Scout’s analysis has them losing the expected-goals battle in all five league matches. Hull outshot them 22 to 12 on Saturday 19 September and had 36 touches in the Newcastle box to their 15. At Leeds, the fourth goal came from a long throw-in that Newcastle failed to deal with properly.

All of that matters on Monday because a direct, physical, set-piece-minded opponent is what Coventry can be when they want to be. This is a rebuild under a new head coach, and for the Hull game he was without nine players. It is not a verdict. But Coventry’s route to goal runs through exactly the territory where Newcastle have been exposed.

What Coventry bring, and what they lack

They defend with their bodies. Forest had 62 per cent of the ball and 24 shots to Coventry’s 10, yet Coventry kept a clean sheet, helped by centre-back Bobby Thomas clearing a chip off the line and a late Forest goal ruled out by VAR for a foul on Yirenkyi. The back three of Ethan Pinnock, Thomas and Stephen Mfuni, who is on loan from Manchester City, is built for that kind of afternoon.

They also have a goalkeeper who can start attacks, which is rarer than it sounds: Rushworth’s long ball set up the Dasilva goal at Forest.

The weaknesses are plain. They conceded ten goals in their first four games, several of them described locally as awful. Centre-back Aurèle Amenda is out for up to three months, two more squad players, Josh Eccles and Luke Woolfenden, are still working back, and Milan van Ewijk, the first-choice right wing-back, has only just returned to training, as has his understudy Kaine Kesler-Hayden. Many of Lampard’s players are making their Premier League debuts, and he has already spoken of how ruthless the league feels.

Best-guess line-ups

Coventry City (3-4-3): goalkeeper Rushworth; centre-backs Mfuni, Thomas and Pinnock; midfield Yirenkyi (right wing-back), Grimes (captain), Onyeka and Dasilva (left wing-back); attack Rudoni, Thomas-Asante and Mason-Clark.

Van Ewijk could return at right wing-back if he comes through training, which would move Yirenkyi inside.

Newcastle United (4-2-3-1): Horníček; Miley, Thiaw (c), Botman, Hall; González, Willock; Murphy, Wissa, Barnes; Fernandez-Pardo.

Joelinton, Elanga and Steur are the likeliest to be eased in from the bench, depending on who is cleared. Amar Dedić would challenge Miley at right-back if fit, Burn is the closest to a return among the defenders, and Tino Livramento is doubtful.

Prediction

Coventry 1-2 Newcastle.

Newcastle have more quality and more attacking options, and Coventry have no first-choice striker and no home goals yet. But the xG numbers say this will be closer than the scoreline suggests, and a long ball or a set-piece is exactly how Coventry could get a goal.

What comes next

Kick-off is 8pm on Monday, live on Sky Sports. Whatever happens, neither side leaves with their story settled.

Newcastle are due at home to Aston Villa on 17 October, where a fuller squad should give a clearer view of where Jaissle’s rebuild stands. Coventry travel to Tottenham a week later, with Awoniyi available again and Wright’s return pencilled in for November, the date that may matter more to their season than any single Monday night.

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