Newcastle had 67% of the possession and 19 shots at the Coventry Building Society Arena. They also made four mistakes, and Coventry punished every one.

Lukas Hornicek has the ball. Then he doesn’t.

Six minutes into a Monday night in Coventry, with 30,811 inside the arena, a routine ball drops out of his hands and runs loose. Sidiki Cherif, the Coventry striker making his first Premier League start, goes down. The referee points to the spot. Jack Rudoni, their attacking midfielder, steps up and scores.

It is the kind of ball a Premier League goalkeeper collects without thinking. Hornicek should have held it the first time. FotMob’s rating for him, 4.8, was the lowest of anyone on the pitch.

Everything Newcastle do for the rest of the night is an answer to that moment. Most of the answers are wrong.

First half: all the ball, no goals

And yet the ball is theirs. Newcastle push Coventry back, and the home side survive on two clearances from Bobby Thomas, a centre-back who spends the half throwing himself into the way of things.

The first comes in front of an unguarded net, after Jacob Murphy knocks Harvey Barnes’ cross back into the danger area. The second is worse for Newcastle. Matias Fernandez-Pardo rounds Carl Rushworth, Coventry’s goalkeeper, with the goal in front of him, and Thomas gets back to clear that too.

Credit to Thomas. But the second one is Pardo’s to finish.

Newcastle paid a reported £51.4m to Lille for him on 1 September, and six weeks later he is still waiting for his first goal for the club. The numbers say he was involved: FotMob gave him 0.70 in combined expected goals and assists, the highest of any Newcastle player. That is the point. Involvement is what a decent forward provides. A £51m forward is paid for goals, and on a night when others are making mistakes at the back, Newcastle need him to cover for them at the other end. He is 21 and still settling, and there is time. That chance, though, is the sort he is expected to take.

Newcastle go in a goal down.

48 minutes: the throw

Three minutes after the break, a long throw. Coventry have been firing them in all night.

The clearance does not clear. Cherif takes a touch on the edge of the D, turns, and drills the ball into the bottom-right corner. 2-0.

It is a lovely finish, and it is a goal Newcastle gift him. Yoane Wissa, the nearest man, is a beat slow to close him down. Joe Willock is off the pitch receiving treatment, which leaves Newcastle a man short as the throw comes in. That explains the shape of the defending. It does not excuse the reaction.

Minutes later Sven Botman botches a clearance of his own and Cherif, with a second goal there for the taking, slices it wide. Newcastle have not earned the reprieve.

59 and 70 minutes: the door opens

Matthias Jaissle reaches for his bench. Amar Dedić, Joelinton and Bazoumana Touré come on for Lewis Miley, Willock and Murphy, and the game tilts. Dedić looks sharper at right-back than Miley had before him.

Eleven minutes later Botman drives a 20-yard shot into the near corner, set up by Nico González. 2-1. The door is open.

Newcastle never get through it.

81 minutes: the touch

Joelinton is 22 minutes into his first appearance of the season, after an injury that had kept him out of the opening seven matches. He takes a touch on the edge of his own area, and the ball gets away from him.

Coventry pounce. Ellis Simms, a substitute striker who has been on the pitch for three minutes and 15 seconds, shoots, and it beats Hornicek. 3-1.

One loose touch on the edge of his own area, and Coventry turn it into a goal. The fault is Joelinton’s. Match fitness explains the touch; it does not soften it.

86 minutes: the glide

Five minutes later it is four.

Stephen Mfuni, a defender by trade on loan from Manchester City, has been on the pitch for three minutes and 31 seconds. He glides past Newcastle’s players and into the penalty area, then finishes in off the far post, beyond Hornicek’s reach. Jay Dasilva, Coventry’s left-back, gets the assist.

It is a fine piece of skill and Mfuni deserves the credit. But a substitute walking into the box that easily says more about where Newcastle’s heads are at 3-1 than it does about him.

Twice on a Monday

Leeds on 14 September. Coventry on 12 October. Two Monday-night away games, two 4-1 defeats. In between came a 2-1 win over Hull on 19 September and an international break that should have let the side carry that momentum forward. Once is a bad night. Twice, on the same night of the week and with the same ending, becomes a question.

Newcastle are 11th with eight points, and the 13 goals they have conceded are the joint-most in the league, level with Chelsea and Bournemouth.

What links Elland Road and Coventry

On the surface the two nights look identical: Monday, away from home, 4-1. Underneath they are different matches, and it matters which problem belongs to which.

Leeds was a beating on the pitch. Daniel Farke’s side had 14 shots to Newcastle’s seven and won the expected-goals count 1.99 to 0.88. Nico González had gone off inside 20 minutes as a concussion substitute, leaving 18-year-old Sean Steur and 20-year-old Lewis Miley as the midfield pair, and Miley’s deflection opened the scoring. Jaissle said afterwards that Newcastle could not match Leeds’ physicality in the first half. Coventry was the reverse. Newcastle were ahead on expected goals, faced only nine shots, and Coventry’s non-penalty xG was 0.64. At Leeds they were outplayed. At Coventry they beat themselves.

Three threads run through both.

The first is the long throw. Leeds’ fourth goal came in the 59th minute, when Newcastle failed to clear a long throw and Noah Okafor, a Leeds forward, volleyed in from the edge of the box. Coventry’s second, in the 48th, came from the same failure, with Cherif taking a touch on the edge of the D. It was not clear whether Newcastle were marking zonally or man for man. It was clear that nobody had Cherif. Whatever the scheme, the second ball dropped to a shooter on the edge of the area both times.

The second is what happens next. Leeds scored three times in 14 minutes, Coventry twice in five. Newcastle do not just concede; they concede in clusters.

The third is the personnel. Hornicek, Thiaw, Botman and Hall started both games, with Amar Dedić at right-back at Leeds and Miley at Coventry, and the unit has shipped eight goals in two away matches. That does not make them the whole problem. Botman made 17 defensive contributions at Leeds, more than anyone on the pitch, which says as much about the work the structure handed him as about him.

Is it Jaissle’s system? Partly. Going into Leeds, Newcastle had faced more shots than any side in the league, averaging 20.3 a game, which suggests the press, built to win the ball high up the pitch, was being bypassed too easily and leaving the back four exposed. At Leeds that cost them. At Coventry it did not. The problem there was execution, not structure.

Three adjustments suggest themselves. Put a body on the edge of the box for opposition long throws, so the second ball has an owner. Keep a midfielder deeper to cover behind the press when it is beaten; with González and Joelinton available again, Jaissle has the options. And when Newcastle are chasing a game, make sure a lost ball in midfield cannot become a shot on goal, because that is exactly how the 81st-minute goal arrived.

None of that requires tearing up a system that has shown it can win matches. It requires finishing the job at the edges of the box.

The good news is on the bench

At Coventry, Newcastle were not outplayed. They created enough to win and wasted it: three big chances, all missed, and six shots on target worth a combined 0.39 in expected goals on target, against 2.63 for Coventry’s six. That is a finishing and decision-making problem, not a talent one, and those are the problems a squad can fix.

And the squad is getting bigger. Newcastle’s bench at Coventry read Pope, Schär, Joelinton, Bamba, Osula, Steur, Touré, Burn and Dedić. Five of the nine players who missed the Hull win were back: González, back from concussion protocols, started, while Joelinton, Dedić, Will Osula and Dan Burn all came off the bench for minutes. Joelinton, mistake and all, brought the snap in the tackle that Newcastle’s midfield has been missing, and FotMob credited him with five defensive contributions in his 31 minutes.

Four are still out: Tino Livramento, Jacob Ramsey, Anthony Elanga and goalkeeper Ewen Jaouen. Jaissle is rebuilding after the summer departures of Anthony Gordon, Bruno Guimarães and Sandro Tonali, and he has described it as a period of huge transition. The depth that was missing in the opening weeks of the season is returning.

Saturday

Aston Villa arrive at St James’ Park on Saturday, kick-off 5.30pm, sitting 16th on five points to Newcastle’s eight. The returnees will have a few more days of training behind them, and Joelinton, Dedić, Osula and Burn now carry minutes into the week.

Coventry, on back-to-back league wins after their victory at Nottingham Forest before the break, travel to Tottenham, who have yet to win this season.

Newcastle had 67% of the ball on Monday night and could not hold on to the things that mattered. Hornicek had it in his hands in the sixth minute and let it go. Against Villa, the chance is to start holding on.