OPINION
Newcastle United goalkeeper Karl Darlow has been firmly entrenched as the club’s number two for some time now, but his spell on the sidelines might soon be coming to an end.
That’s because Goal reported on Sunday that the Magpies are one of three Premier League teams monitoring Nice shot-stopper Walter Benitez ahead of a potential summer swoop.
Obviously it’s not a foregone conclusion that Rafael Benitez’s side manage to bring in his namesake, but the fact that the club are looking at possibly signing a ‘keeper suggests that Darlow is surely on the brink of a St James’ Park exit come the end of the season.
The 28-year-old will have been a Newcastle player for five years this summer, but that half-decade stay on Tyneside could well soon be over. He will only have a year left on his contract in a month or so’s time, meaning that the Magpies will likely look to move him on soon.
It seems that they fancy Benitez as his replacement, too. And why wouldn’t they? By all measures the Argentinian would appear to be a superior player to the former Nottingham Forest man.
So it would certainly be a positive move for the club to bring the Nice man in and shift Darlow out. If Benitez were to arrive, he would be the number two at the very worst. So it’s Darlow who would likely be in peril should the 26-year-old make the move to St James’ Park.
Darlow has become a periphery figure at Newcastle in recent years, with Martin Dubravka now way ahead of him in the pecking order. If Benitez were to join the Slovakian on Tyneside, it would surely be curtains for the Englishman.
