Joelinton: From ‘£40m flop’ to Man of the Match as a midfield enforcer – A footballer reborn?

If you’d said to any Newcastle fan last year that Joelinton would be putting in Man of the Match performances this season they might have said you’d had too many Newcastle Browns! But of course that wasn’t accounting for the ‘Howe factor‘…

The Brazilian netted his first goal of the season against Brentford as part of a good all-round performance where we also saw him pressing, carrying the ball from deep and linking play very well.

Then, Howe moved J7 into more of a ‘midfield enforcer’ role as we had to play ten men against Norwich. Here we saw tremendous improvement in all areas of his game; use of physicality to win balls, technical ability with the ball at his feet, great attitude and determination, plus tactical intelligence.

The evidence so far suggests we are seeing a new, extremely versatile Joelinton who really could become a lynchpin for the team this season and beyond. As Howe himself said after the Norwich game:

“I wouldn’t swap Joelinton…I really like him as a person and I think we can take his game to new heights…we’ll probably play him in different positions against different opponents.”

Howe has been very clever in his pre-match press conferences by bigging up the 25-year-old re. how he impresses in training. This is a clever manager who understands sports psychology and deliberately breeds confidence into players he may think need it.

On top of Howe’s influence, as reported in the Chronicle, Joelinton has been no slouch either. He’s been working with his own separate fitness coach and an experienced football analyst –  looking back at his past performances and identifying key areas for improvement – which almost undoubtedly would include creating assists and goal scoring itself.

After NUFC’s 14 years under the mediocre Ashley regime, Joelinton’s journey of improvement is both refreshing and uplifting for us to see, among many other positives at our beloved football club. And long may it continue!

Under the close tutelage of Howe and his back room team and with continued hard work from the £40m man himself, we will hopefully see a very capable and adaptable player perform consistently week in week out.

As the song goes: ’He’s Brazilian. He only cost 40 million and we think he’s ******* brilliant. He’s Joelinton!‘