Newcastle United head coach Steve Bruce has offered Magpies attacker Yoshinori Muto scant hope of improved game time moving forward.
The Japan international, on a reported £54,000-per-week at the club [Source: Spotrac], has started just two games all season [Source: Transfermarkt], but Bruce feels that five players are ahead of him in the pecking order at the moment.
“Well at the moment we have three up top – and we have Andy Carroll and Dwight Gayle, they are in front of him at the moment,” he said as per The Chronicle.
“But he’s just got to keep working away. And then hope for his chance.”
OPINION
It’s all good Bruce saying that Muto has to keep working and hope he gets his opportunity, but he’d just said moments before that there were five players ahead of him. Miguel Almiron, Allan Saint-Maximin, Joelinton, Carroll and Gayle are clearly all preferred by Bruce, and so the former Mainz man likely feels that he’s got no chance of featuring any time soon no matter how hard he works in training. Muto is 27 years of age now, and so you cannot expect him to be patient for much longer. He is in the prime of his career, yet he’s struggling to make the match day squad for Newcastle at the moment. It doesn’t sound as if things are going to change for him any time soon, and so you wonder if Bruce will look to move him on in January. If the club can secure a decent enough fee for him then that would be ideal, because he’s not getting a look-in these days.
