OPINION
Newcastle United midfielder Jonjo Shelvey rightly has pundits lining up to rave about his ability but as it stands the club are currently wasting his talents.
The 26-year-old central midfielder was superb in the large bulk of his 33 appearances across all competitions in the 2017/18 season and rightly had football experts drooling over his passing ability.
Ian Wright gushed about the midfielder to The Sun, Glenn Hoddle waxed lyrical in his Daily Mail column in May about Shelvey and Sky Sports pundit Paul Merson even claimed, in his Daily Star column during March, that the Magpies had the best passer in the league in their team in the form of Shelvey.
And that’s merely scratching the surface when it comes to pundits tripping over themselves to talk about Shelvey.
However given his immense range of passing, his ability to create easy goal scoring chances for his teammates due to his range, the 26-year-old only finished the season with three assists.
This saw him not even lead the club’s assist chart, Matt Ritchie and Ayoze Perez got that privilege with five assists each, and it’s easy to see it wasn’t his fault.
While Shelvey’s designated role isn’t necessarily to be the club’s assist machine, it’s easy to believe that he is capable of being just that.
The Magpies just need to put attacking players in front of him who are capable of thriving off his sublime passes.
Perez ended up being the club’s top scorer with 10 by the time the season finished and he cannot be described as clinical in anyway.
Mike Ashley failed to spend the cash on signing a prolific forward in the last two transfer windows and this failure has led to Shelvey’s immense talent being wasted.
The 26-year-old, who rakes in £90,000-a-week according to The Sun, still may be an impressively vital presence in his side despite his low amount of assists, but he could still be so much more if he had someone to convert the chances he created for them.
Therefore while it seems hard to believe given Shelvey’s warranted praise in the recent season, the Magpies are currently wasting his talents due to their own failure to not put the right players around him and that needs to change.
