It’s difficult to ignore the elephant in the room when he’s 6ft 6ins.
In what promises to be a hectic final week of the transfer window, Nick Woltemade is one to watch. A year on from becoming their club record signing, his future as a Newcastle United player feels increasingly uncertain.
In some ways he is not to blame. He was a panic buy, signed by a transfer committee that wasn’t fit for purpose who had been engulfed by chaos all summer. Woltemade was the last man standing in a transfer window when Newcastle missed out on all their top targets and they wound up recruiting someone who was never a natural fit for a press that was meant to be relentless. It was those failures that informed this summer’s more proactive attitude in the transfer window.
If Woltemade was a bad fit for Eddie Howe he feels even more of a mismatch for Matthias Jaissle, who has cranked the volume up to 11 in a bid to get Newcastle playing rock and roll football. With no European football he has a licence to demand intensity in every match – but that is just not Woltemade’s game.
Jaissle oversaw a 3-2 victory over West Brom on Wednesday night (Photo: Getty)
