Newcastle fans have rightly been praising Joelinton for his newly improved performances, as the £40m man has impressed in recent games under new manager Eddie Howe.
However, one so-called ‘football expert’, Gabby Agbonlahor, has shown a complete lack of understanding, when it comes to Joelinton’s valuable contributions to the Newcastle team this season, as his recent comments on Talksport reveal:
“I still don’t see anything that I’m watching that shows me any quality. People are raving about him, has he scored any goals? Any assists?”
“It’s alright looking busy, I just don’t understand it. It baffles me.”
This just confirms what we were all thinking – the bloke is a lazy pundit who needs to do his homework to a much higher standard. Not only that, this feels like more proof that he’ll say black when we say white when it comes to anything NUFC related.
Agbonlahor seems to have totally missed the point around J7’s improvement and perhaps hasn’t been watching all our games, judging by his unsubstantiated negative ‘observations’.
For a start, J7 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. So, his cry of ‘has he scored any goals?’ is him getting his facts wrong for a start.
Then, against Norwich, when down to ten men, Howe moved J7 into more of a ‘midfield enforcer’ role where he successfully used his physicality to win balls, showed good technical ability, plus great attitude, determination and tactical intelligence.
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.”
Joelinton has shown new-found confidence under Howe and has also been working with his own separate fitness coach, as well an experienced football analyst, in order identify key areas for improvement in his game, which will hopefully lead to more goals and assists.
His improvement is one of the few positives Newcastle fans can take from our difficult season so far and with continued hard work under Howe, we will hopefully see him perform consistently well – and vitally, help save us from relegation.
To be fair to Abgonlahor he makes his position very clear… “He doesn’t understand”, “he’s baffled”. Ultimately we should feel sorry for him not berate him, the poor thicko is just trying to remain relevant despite his obvious deficiencies.
JulioLaker(Quote)