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Strange case of Jonjo Shelvey set to sign new contract

4 years ago
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News this week that Jonjo Shelvey is set to sign a new contract.

The newspapers full of it after Saturday.

The midfielder pulling the strings as Newcastle won at West Ham, the scoreline 3-2 but NUFC worth far more than a single goal margin.

As for Jonjo Shelvey, he was involved in both moves that led to the first two goals.

Then as well as hitting the bar with a superb outside of the right boot effort from outside the box, Shelvey scored the winner with a 30 yard free-kick.

Now he is widely reported to be the next Newcastle star to sign a new contract, after Martin Dubravka signed up until 2025 last month.

From my personal viewpoint these reports suggest two things.

Firstly, either this is pure fantasy from the newspapers concerned.

Secondly. or it is one of the most bizarre decisions of the very bizarre 13 seasons (so far) we have had with Mike Ashley as owner.

Why would you be giving a new extended/enhanced contract to Jonjo Shelvey at this point?

Not being funny but he would be pretty much the last person that I would be wanting to tie down to longer at the club.

It isn’t that I don’t think he has ability but he shows it so infrequently in the Premier League.

Yes he played very well on Saturday but tell me the other games in recent memory when he played well…?

Apart from the final day of last season 4-0 win at Fulham, I can’t really think of any.

Indeed, on checking up, in the last 18 months Jonjo Shelvey has only started three Premier League games that Newcastle have won.

Those being against West Ham’s comical defending, an already relegated Fulham side, plus the 1-0 win over Watford on 3 November 2018. That game actually seeing Shelvey going off injured at 0-0 after playing really poorly, with Ki Sung-yeung replacing Shelvey and orchestrating the first victory of the 2018/19 season.

This season sums up Jonjo Shelvey perfectly.

Steve Bruce set-up his team around the midfielder at the start of the season and after defeats to Arsenal and Norwich he was quickly dropped, the team beating Spurs in the next game.

Given another chance he started against Liverpool and the dreadful Brighton draw before being then left out in favour of Matty Longstaff for the Man Utd win, after Shelvey missed Leicester with a knock.

For whatever reason (fans live in hope it is make the club more attractive to potential buyers), Mike Ashley has allowed an astonishing number of players to run their contracts down. However, whilst Jonjo Shelvey has only until end of June 2021 before his ends, the likes of Isaac Hayden and Fabian Schar are in the same position and they are two who urgently need to be given extended and enhanced contracts, not Shelvey.

Shelvey is now coming up shortly (January 2020) to having spent the equivalent of three full Premier League seasons at Newcastle and in that time he has only scored four PL goals and got seven PL assists. That is nowhere near enough.

I was also interested to read that his goal on Saturday was the very first Premier League goal he has ever scored from a direct free-kick, unbelievable with his ability.

By the time his current deal is set to end, Jonjo Shelvey will only be months away from turning 30. With a midfielder who is so lacking in movement/mobility now, would you really be deciding now to tie him to NUFC into his 30s?

When you add in the fact that he is still Newcastle’s highest paid player, it sounds even dafter.

Any ideas of a new contract for Jonjo Shelvey need to be shelved and what he needs to do first is play week in week out for the rest of this season like he did in that 10 or 11 game run alongside Mohamed Diame towards the end of the 2017/18 season.

This is a massive season for both Shelvey and Newcastle, whether they should stay together beyond the end of this season is down to the midfielder in these months ahead.

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