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Massadio Haidara Suffering The Jonas Gutierrez Effect?

10 years ago
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There are many things that don’t make sense about Newcastle United but then that’s nowt new, however the case of Massadio Haidara is a strange one.

A young player with bags full of potential, Haidara had already made just under fifty first team appearances for Ligue 1 side Nancy before he was twenty years of age. Newcastle then picked him up for around £2m in what was considered quite a coup for such a promising young player.

He made eight appearances in total last season only for Callum McManaman’s sickening assault to dramatically alter the course of his season.

This season was initially affected by injury but since coming back from injury Haidara hasn’t had a single Premier League start.

In fact, while he managed seven substitute appearances spread over December and January, he hasn’t had a single minute of pitch time since, despite Newcastle looking pretty terrible for much of this period.

A strong, quick and skilful player, it appears incomprehensible that he can’t get onto the pitch ahead of some of those who have pulled on the shirt in recent matches.

As well as looking a decent defender, Haidara has the ability to go past his man which is something missing form pretty much all of our first team squad and I could see him starting left midfield as well as at left-back.

I think Paul Dummett gives it everything but I don’t think he has half as much to offer as Haidara.

So what’s the problem?

Well it had never occurred to me but I’ve heard it speculated that he may be suffering the same treatment as Jonas Gutierrez.

If you remember, Jonas was almost totally frozen out before his move to Norwich and then it was reported afterwards that if the Argentinian had played X more games the club had an agreement that he would then have been entitled to another contract.

As for Haidara, it is not far-fetched to imagine that the deal Newcastle did with Nancy could very well have included extra payments depending on matches played…

No ‘club insider’ or ‘sauce’ to guide us I’m afraid but can you come up with a better explanation as to why such a talented young player hasn’t had more of a chance in recent shocking performances?

Seeing the likes of Marveax and Shola coming on at Craven Cottage was just too depressing for words.

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