OPINION
Sky Sports pundit Clinton Morrison appeared on True Geordie’s live stream during Newcastle United’s loss to Crystal Palace on Saturday and claimed the Magpies lack a player capable of running at a team.
The former Premier League footballer, who is regularly seen on Sky Sport’s The Debate and midweek Soccer Specials, shared that he thought Magpies didn’t have a player like Wilfried Zaha.
Morrison highlighted that Zaha created Palace’s only goal of the game on Saturday, by dazzling his way into the box and winning a penalty, and Rafa Benitez had no player similar to him to call upon.
“You look at Zaha, Zaha is Palace’s key man look how he made the goal but Newcastle do not have a player like that who can run at people, beat people,” said Morrison on True Geordie’s live streaming on YouTube during the Magpies’ 1-0 loss to Palace (2:19:08).
“They used to have it, always playing Newcastle back in the day, their teams were unreal.”
With these remarks in mind, surely Ayoze Perez and Miguel Almiron should be scratching their heads on Morrison’s claim.
Perez has proven numerous times for Benitez’s side that he has the ability to dart past players using his pace as well as dribbling ability.
The only downside with the Spanish player is that after going on fantastic runs where he weaves past several players, his final ball is normally not up to scratch.
Yet the point remains he is a player who can beat people and run at defences in order to cause them to squirm, even that Morrison claims the Magpies don’t have one.
Then there’s Almiron.
The 25-year-old has blistering pace and has shown ahead of joining the Magpies that he loves to run at defences and is more than capable of running rings round on players on his way to goal.
While Almiron hasn’t overly wowed across his outings for the Magpies, with him still settling in, that doesn’t mean he isn’t the type of player that Morrison believes is missing.
With that in mind the Newcastle duo should be scratching their head as while they may not be in a similar vein of form to Zaha, they both are capable of providing a bit of magic by running at teams and beating players.
