Gabriel Obertan coming back to haunt Newcastle United on Saturday?
Gabriel Obertan left many Newcastle fans afraid whenever he was named in the starting eleven during his five years at St James Park.
However, those same United supporters will be hoping that the French winger doesn’t come back to haunt them this Saturday.
Since arriving at Wigan as a free agent in late January, Gabriel Obertan has slowly worked his way into the first team, involved in seven of the last eight Championship games – the Frenchman made four substitute appearance before then starting the last three matches.
Newcastle fans won’t be surprised to hear that he hasn’t been pulling up any trees since returning to England, with relegation favourites Wigan winning two and drawing one of his seven matches.
At a rate of a point per match, it is a slight improvement in form for the club that sit second bottom of the Championship with 34 points from 38 games so far.
Gabrie Obertan has been operating as a left sided attacking midfielder for Wigan and has one assist but no goals so far. It would surely be far too cruel for him to decide to have one of his rare decent games this coming weekend.
Rafa Benitez quickly worked out that both Obertan and Sylvain Marveaux were no use to him when arriving at Newcastle, the pair of them paid off last year long before their contracts were due to run out at the end of June 2016.
Since leaving France eight years ago, the 28 year old has managed precisely three league goals. Scoring on the 1 February 2012 as Newcastle won 2-0 at Blackburn, then 18 October 2014 in a 1-0 win over Leicester.
This summer saw a short-term contract agreed with Anzhi, playing as a centre-forward Obertan managed a single goal in a 1-0 win at Ural.
With no contract renewal offered by the Russian club, the winger has now found his way back to England and the north west with Wigan, interesting to see how he does on Saturday.
If you remember, he was one of the few Newcastle signings that was credited to Alan Pardew, rather than the usual Graham Carr route of identifying new players.
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