The world is a very odd place at the moment. There’s a global pandemic, we’re four months into a Saudi takeover that should’ve taken ‘four weeks’ and Joselu is scoring goals for fun in Spain.
The latter may be a slight exaggeration, despite a very respectable 11 strikes for Alaves in his first season away from St James’ Park, however another stat has emerged on the in-form Spaniard this week.
As revealed below, only ONE player in Europe has received more Man of the Match awards this season than our former flop (10) – and that’s none other than Lionel Messi (22!).
Joselu’s 10 Man of the Match awards put him level with Cristiano Ronaldo, Real Madrid star Karim Benzema and Chelsea’s new £50m man Timo Werner. If that doesn’t sound crazy enough, he’s won one more than Man City’s Kevin De Bruyne over the past year!
Now, this shouldn’t make a mockery of the fact we sold him last summer as he did look out of his depth at Premier League level and rarely looked like scoring, however it doesn’t half show show how much he’s turned around his career since he sealed a £2m move to Alaves.
Not only that, it’s hard to ignore the irony that our former flop who couldn’t hit a barn door is now in the form of his life, while our new £40m club record signing has finished 2019/20 with just two league goals.
I’m not saying I want Joselu back and still think our young Brazilian could turn it around on Tyneside, but the fact the former has comfortably outscored our ENTIRE front line across 2019/20 shows you exactly where we need to improve in the transfer market.
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