Eddie Howe has confirmed that Emil Krafth looks set to extend his stay on Tyneside after reports in Sweden claimed a new contract was in the offing.
The right-back is one of several fringe men approaching the final few months of their contract, but Howe’s comments this morning suggest we’ve decided to activate our option to extend his deal by a further 12 months. Krafth signed an extension in June 2022 to keep him on Tyneside until 2024 and it’s believed that deal included an option of another 12 months.
Now we look set to activate that clause, it will keep him at St James’ Park for the 2024/25 campaign, securing him another year at the club.
When asked about reports claiming a one-year extension had been agreed, Howe said this to NewcastleWorld:
“That might be the case (that he’s signing an extension).
“I think it is a consolidation of an option, yeah.”
With Kieran Trippier and Tino Livramento ahead of him in the pecking order, some have questioned our decision to keep the 29-year-old.
However, with Javier Manquillo leaving for Spain last month, coupled with Livramento’s ability to play at left-back and Krafth’s rock-solid displays when asked to fill in at right-back or centre-back, he is clearly considered a valuable squad man.
This is absolutely nothing personal to Krafth – it’s a wider puzzlement as well to be honest – why one earth are we extending contracts of fringe players who will play little to no games for us?!?!!!
I take your point about Manq leaving in January but let’s not forget we have Harrison Ashby out on loan at Swansea – a player we paid around £3.5m for.
Not a huge fee I know but why pay it at all for him to be a 4th choice RB?!?!!.
What is the project?? What are we building for by keeping all these ageing fringe players who don’t get a game in a team that is blighted by injury & fatigue.
We’ve given contract extensions to players like Gillespie, Karius, Dummett, Ritchie, Krafth – how much game time have any actually had?!.
We’ve also extended contracts for the of Burn, Schar who I appreciate have performed well for Howe – but both are over 30 years old and are hardly the future of the club.
We are being sold the dream of competing at the top of the table – but let’s be honest, other than Schar, which players that I’ve mentioned are getting into ANY other PL team?!?!!.
Sharpy17(Quote)