A Decade of Shola
September 16th 2010 16:56
Link: twitter.com/mattsaltmer
Last week marked 10 years since Shola Ameobi made his Newcastle United debut. It is very rare that any player stays at a top-level club for more than 3 or 4 years these days, so our number 23 has shown fantastic committment. His at times erratic form, but willingness to die for his team, has made him a cult hero at St James's Park, and despite at times being one of his many critics, I now see big Shola as a legend!
After signing for the Mags age just 13, Sir Bobby Robson gave the Nigerian born hit-man his first team debut on September 9th 2000, aged 18. He has gone on to score 62 goals for the club, 42 in the league. Some what surprisingly, he is Newcastle's second leading goalscorer in Europe ever, not so surprisingly behind Alan Shearer. Ameobi has certainly had his fair share of ups and downs in his decade with us.
Scoring at Nou Camp must be the highlight of his career. In the absence of Bellamy and Shearer through suspension, Ameobi enjoyed his finest night, despite going down 3-1 to Barcelona. As a youngster, performances such as this prompted many to tip him for great things. Another fine performance came in the 3-2 win against Sunderland in 2006, when many pundits stated the then 24 year old had come of age. Not quite as the case turned out to be.
Down points of his career include fans turning on him on several occasions, for simply failing to perform for the first team. He was loaned out to Stoke City a couple of seasons ago, before a move to Ipswich fell through as he failed a medical. Now at 28, Shola will be desperate to prove he can score goals in the Premier League. He scored 8 in 8 at the start of last season, before injury, then the emergence of Andy Carroll saw him spend much of the rest of the season warming the bench. During this time, he was linked with the Nigeria African Nations squad, but his injury ended that as well.
He recently captained the side for the first time in the League Cup match at Accrington, where he scored. He will no doubt be remembered as a cult figure by Newcastle fans when he is gone, mainly because of his inconsistency and commitment. But the big striker, who scored seven goals at youth level for England, will be giving his all to be remembered as a goal scorer at the highest level, and move further up the Toon's all time goalscoring charts. Whatever the future holds, its been a great/awful ten years, and I wouldn't mind ten more!
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