Leon Best is going nowhere – Give the lad a chance

Words by Kevin Doocey on May 5, 2010

Best - Hasn’t been a giving the sight of day at Newcastle United this season

All I’ve been hearing of late is of who will be leaving Newcastle United this summer and throughout lists of many fans preferred ‘Ins and Outs’ I’ve noticed that Leon Best is close to the top of them. To be quite honest, I can’t understand why. This is the lad we bought on the final day in January from Coventry, who was their leading scorer at that stage and well up the scoring charts . After his move, he didn’t get a huge amount of playing time in the Newcastle United shirt but on his sub appearances, he’s done quite well. in fact, I’d credit him for that precious point we earned at Swansea in a 1-1 draw. A draw that went a long way towards us winning the title and indeed inevitably, denting their play-off plans.

He arrived in January as I said, and people are expecting him to be shipped out of the Toon (No pun intended) this coming Summer? Best is only 23, and with Andy Carroll, Peter Lovenkrands and Shola Ameobi all notching up very impressive tallies for the season, was there ever the chance that Best would knock any of those out of the team for a prolonged period of time?

Best will stay at Newcastle United this season as far as I’d be concerned and get a nice run out too if you ask me. Whether we buy a striker and a good one at that, time will tell but we probably do need a proven Premier League goal-scorer and no, please don’t say Andy Carroll.

A small amount of fans want rid of Best already with things being bouted around like ’ Just not good enough IMO’ or ‘Hasn’t proved his worth to Newcastle, ship him off’. Ridiculous to say the least. How many games has Best started? Fair enough he didn’t manage a goal but if he did, I would’ve put money on him banging a few more in after it.

That said, I really would be surprised if Newcastle United sold or indeed released Leon Best in the Summer. As my headline suggests, give the lad a chance and judge him after a season. A lot of thought Fabrice Pancrate was ‘pure quality’ when he smacked one in against Watford too eh?

Comments welcome 🙂