This may prove Eddie Howe's biggest challenge yet on Tyneside.
That is saying something when this is the man who ended Newcastle's 70-year wait for a major domestic trophy by winning the Carabao Cup last season.
This is the man who led his side to Champions League qualification in 2023 and 2025.
This is the man who kept Newcastle up in 2022 after taking over a winless side in deep relegation trouble only a few months previously.
This overall body of work is why Match of the Day pundit Dion Dublin has "no worries" about Howe.
"They hit such heights very quickly in his tenure, where everybody is expecting them to stay there," Dublin told BBC's Final Score.
"With the amount of injuries and stuff that he's had with this squad, it was never going to happen, but it's down to him now to make sure that he gets them back to the levels he's set."
Momentum is against Newcastle, though.
After coming out fighting on the eve of this game, declaring his fire was "burning very strongly", Howe looked glassy-eyed in his news conference following this latest defeat.
Asked if his players had the same fire, he tellingly took a seven-second pause before responding.
"I'm hesitating because I'm speaking on behalf of other people and that's very difficult to do," he said.
"I believe they do. From what I see in the training ground, I don't see any sense of poor attitude or poor commitment to their work.
"I see a group of players that are always giving their all."
Not only are Newcastle failing to see much of a return from a £100m-plus net recruitment drive that Howe was heavily involved in.
Newcastle are still searching for a lasting solution after striker Alexander Isak pushed to join Liverpool last summer.
Over the course of a draining season, Howe has pivoted from Woltemade to Wissa to Anthony Gordon and now Osula, who came mightily close to joining Eintracht Frankfurt on deadline day last September.
It sums up Howe's desperate search for a formula as his future comes under increasing scrutiny.
"It's disappointing when you are not delivering for your supporters," he said.
"That is the ultimate disappointment when you feel you are letting people down who come here and support us.
"If they are critical of us, we have to accept that as that's the game we are in."
Read more on Howe’s Newcastle future
