OPINION
When teams have underperforming players who rarely feature for them, the question becomes how do they induce another club to come in and buy said players?
That’s the dilemma facing Newcastle United at the moment in regards to left back Achraf Lazaar and winger Rolando Aarons, both of whom exited the club on loan on Monday.
The latter dropped all the way down to League One with Wycombe Wanderers, while the former decided to opt for a return to Italy with Serie B side Cosenza.
However, those are merely temporary solutions to big continuing problems at Newcastle. As per Spotrac, Aarons’ contract runs to 2021, while the same website claim Lazaar’s deal extends for the same amount of time.
So, unfortunately for Newcastle, these are two loan deals that will see the players through to the end of their contracts with the club. No, it only delays the inevitable.
You have to wonder if the Magpies couldn’t shift these two permanently if they really tried. Sure, teams don’t necessarily want to gamble with the expense of signing underperforming players, but if Steve Bruce intimated that he was willing to accept less than £1million for them then surely somebody would agree to that.
Until that point Newcastle are just delaying things. It’s frustrating, because clearly neither of these two men have a future at St James’ Park. Despite that, they will continue to return to the club at the end of each loan spell knowing that another temporary spell away likely awaits them.
The players must take a share of the criticism themselves, of course, because if they’d performed lights-out when on loan then someone would surely sign them. However, that hasn’t happened as of yet.
For now, then, we are back where we were in January when the duo headed to Sheffield Wednesday. Alas, still nothing has been solved.
