Quote Originally Posted by Ganpati's Goonerz--AFC's Aboriginal Fertility Cult View Post
You say it's only NUFC but he wasn't going to go to a top team given he's barely played for us. Given that, given the Geordies loved him, he knew he'd be starter and how he fits with the manager, he was obviously only going to go there. No point in other teams wasting transfer time as he'd only leave us for them.

There was one game last season where MA gave both him and AMN a start. It wasn't great and that was that for the pair of them. However, Joe looked no worse than GX or Elneny, and he almost scored. He headed it to much into the ground and bounced up for the keeper to catch it. If he's hit it slightly less downwards, he'd have scored and been a hero. The point is that he was in that position. GX or Mo wouldn't have been. And as we've seen at NU, he's good at this.

If Pépé keeps playing well and improving and Saka and ESR hit top form, then we have some creativity. We now have Ben White to ping the diagonals that GX does. a MF who can arrive late in the box and score is useful. Arsène would probably have played him on the right like Freddie, to shuffle across when we're attacking down the left and to arrive late to score.

You predicted he'd play for England when he broke into the Europa side and kept scoring. I think we should have given him more of a go. Had we had goal line tech, he'd have scored the equaliser vs the Chavs. That's worth bearing in mind.
He's nothing like Freddie and we play in a different way now - definitely would be an odd fit out wide and can't play as a two without seriously compromising the defence. A better comparison, like Ramsey, would be David Platt - another player who needed to be shoehorned into a side rather than being a natural in any formation. I hope he does well at Newcastle but even there he wasn't even starting every week