da blaze casino： Last summer Newcastle United’s most pressing concern was simple, if expensive.
da betcris： After seeing Salomon Rondon’s successful loan spell come to an end and agreeing to sell Ayoze Perez to Leicester City for £30m, what the club desperately needed was a striker capable of finding the net on a semi-regular basis.
After all, the departing duo had been responsible for 54.8% of Newcastle’s goals the previous term with the rest of the squad chipping in with a paltry 29 between them.
What’s more, in the vacuum left by them stood Yoshinori Muto, a peripheral talent with just one Premier League strike from 18 largely forgettable displays, and the returning Dwight Gayle – a forward with an unerring career-long ability to set aflame the Championship before becoming a damp squib in the top flight.
A discussion dissecting what was wrong with Steve Bruce’s side would no doubt last long into the night but by everybody’s estimation what they most needed was firepower.
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In early August Andy Carroll was re-signed on a free transfer and that would help matters maybe but, given his prolonged battle with injuries, the 30-year-old could not be expected to feature in every game. No, the real headline-grabbing solution arrived a fortnight earlier, in the form of a 6ft 1 Brazilian for a substantial fee of £40m.
So surprised were we that Newcastle’s owner Mike Ashley had signed a cheque for that amount that nobody bothered to question at the time why a player who had often played out wide in Germany, and who hardly boasted a prolific record in the Bundesliga was being widely heralded as the next goal scoring sensation in the North East.
With just a single goal to his name from 20 starts, taking us past the halfway point of the season, we’re asking that now though.
In the five seasons since a teenage Joelinton first broke through in his native Brazil the imposing front-man has never yet reached double figures in a whole campaign. Even in his two seasons on loan at Rapid Vienna his best tally was eight and frankly Jesse Lingard could match that in the Austrian league.
It remains his highest haul to date too.
That is not to say that the 23-year-old does not have his merits. He is adept at holding the ball up. He combines a deft touch with a physicality that troubles defenders. His awareness of movement around him is excellent. He would therefore be a great foil for a proven goal scorer.
Only instead Newcastle bought him to be precisely that, a player he is unquestionably not, and to worsen matters placed in his close vicinity are Miguel Almiron and Allan Saint-Maximin – the former a schemer who boasts only one assist and the latter a headless chicken who is a law unto himself.
These are circumstances you would inflict on an enemy if your mood was of a dark disposition.
Newcastle needed a goal scoring number nine and they had £40m quid to get one, a figure that opened up several interesting avenues.
Instead they went for a totally unsuitable player who could never fulfil their remit.
Joelinton cannot be blamed for that, nor deemed a flop.