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Newcastle United fans have been reacting to former Magpies midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum being nominated for the prestigious Ballon d’Or award.

The Dutchman spent just one season at St James’ Park after arriving from PSV Eindhoven in 2015 for £14.5m, and featured in all 38 games of the 2015/16 campaign. Despite scoring 11 goals and conjuring up five assists, it wasn’t enough to stay in the Premier League and the North East side were relegated to the Championship.

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Wijnaldum admitted that he deserved the criticism he received during his time at Newcastle but also said that the Magpies’ 6-2 win over Norwich City was one of the most “defining matches” of his career.

Supporters reacted in a mixed manner and took aim at some of the current players at the club as well as some individuals from their past. One fan even said that it shows how far football has fallen that Wijnaldum was nominated.

Here you will find some of the best responses from Newcastle fans:

This article is part of Football FanCast’s In The Pipeline series, which takes a look at some of the most promising young talent either linked with clubs or emerging from their academies…

Andrew Robertson has turned himself into one of the best left-backs around in recent years.

Just two years ago, he was relegated to the Championship with Hull City, but was snapped up by Liverpool for £8m. Since then, he has appeared in two Champions League finals and was a creative force last season, contributing 11 assists in the Premier League. He has also seen his Transfermarkt value rise to £54m.

However, he is currently the only senior natural left-back in the squad. James Milner has played there on occasion, but he is a central midfielder by trade, meaning he is makeshift on that side of the defence.

With the Scotland international now a doubt for the Reds’ next game against Crystal Palace – he has recently stated he has not been training for the last two-and-a-half weeks because of an ankle issue, and he also pulled out of the Tartan Army’s squad for their Euro 2020 qualifiers against Cyprus and Kazakhstan. Milner could step up once again, but he is not a long-term option.

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In the future, perhaps Jurgen Klopp can look towards his youth academy and Yasser Larouci in particular. The Algerian 18-year-old is still a novice and has yet to play for Liverpool’s first team, but there is plenty of buzz around the teenager at Anfield.

Larouci moved to Merseyside after having come through Le Havre’s famed academy – a place where the likes of Paul Pogba, Steve Mandanda, Benjamin Mendy, Lassana Diara and Dimitri Payet worked their way through.

Since then, he has appeared for the club’s development sides, making 55 appearances across the various different age groups. He has also tasted his first piece of silverware, as well, winning the FA Youth Cup last season.

His displays at that level clearly caught the eye of Klopp, who took him on his pre-season tour of the USA. He played in five warm-up matches, coming up against the likes of Jadon Sancho. His performance against the winger, in particular, earned him praise from the 52-year-old manager. He said:

“Being good in big spaces and in small spaces makes you a pretty interesting player – and that’s what Jadon is. Yasser [Larouci] our 18-year-old left-back played against one of the biggest talents in world football and did pretty well the whole night.”

He used to be a winger, but Under-18 coach Barry Lewtas told Goal.com: “He was a wide player when he came, but this year [2019] we’ve just wanted to have a look at him at left-back, because we think he has the attributes. He’s got great athleticism, he runs into space well, he carries the ball and he gives us great width.”

Giving he used to play further forward, he should have the same offensive drive as Robertson. Meanwhile, considering the lack of depth at his position in the first-team squad, there is no reason why he can’t be the 25-year-old former Dundee man’s understudy. Not everyone can keep Sancho at bay, after all.

This article is part of Football FanCast’s In Numbers series, which takes a statistical look at performances, season-long form and reported transfer targets… 

Charlton Athletic had to take a share of the spoils at Craven Cottage as Fulham twice hit back after going behind in a four-goal thriller.

The visitors opened the scoring just before half-time when Conor Gallagher squeezed a strike underneath Marcus Bettinelli in the Cottagers’ net before the lively Ivan Cavaleiro hit back with a superb solo effort ten minutes into the second half.

Macauley Bonne then managed to double his tally for the club just 90 seconds later, as his header looped over the Fulham shot-stopper.

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But their lead was short-lived with Aleksander Mitrovic, the Championship’s top goalscorer, finally getting a goal himself having hit the crossbar earlier in the match.

The 25-year-old poked home from close range to score his eighth of the season.

The Addicks had their backs against the wall in the final 25 minutes with Fulham launching an onslaught in the hope of finding a winner – Scott Parker’s side recorded 80.9% possession and eight shots, per WhoScored.

One minute after Fulham’s equaliser, Lee Bowyer looked to West Brom loanee Jonathan Leko, but the young forward failed to show why he should be trusted with a starting berth more often.

Per SofaScore, the 20-year-old failed to win any of his ten duels, nine of which were on the ground, which suggests he struggled to match his opposite number and thus invited the aforementioned pressure back onto his side.

He also lost possession four times, having only been on the pitch for a total of 26 minutes, adding to the argument that his presence practically aided Fulham’s barrage of attacks in the final quarter of the game.

Leko has been primarily a winger for West Brom when given an opportunity, playing 63 times on the right according to Transfermarkt’s recorded matches, but for Bowyer, he’s been utilised as a striker.

The youngster has scored two and assisted two so far this season, but this latest performance won’t have done his starting claims any favours, especially after Bonne scored in the lone striker’s role.

WhoScored actually rate Leko’s best position for Charlton out wide as he averages 7.21, which is higher than 6.57 as a striker, so maybe that’s something the Addicks boss should consider going forward.

Though, he won’t be inspired by that dire cameo display.

This article is part of Football FanCast’s Pundit View series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent quotes from journalists, pundits, players and managers…

Former Chelsea defender Paul Elliott feels that Aaron Ramsey left the club “at the right time” after his free transfer to Juventus last summer.

What’s the word?

The Wales international signed a pre-contractual agreement with the Serie A side after being unable to agree to a new deal at the Emirates with a year left on his contract.

Ramsey left north London after a nine-year stint, having signed from Cardiff City in 2008 for £5m.

Elliott, 55, told football.london that the Welshman made the right decision to leave the club.

He said: “They bought him for barely nothing and they have got ten years of services out of him. He is an outstanding talent. I speak to a lot of Arsenal supporters and they were devastated when he left. He went for nothing essentially and that’s to Juventus’ benefit.

In the video below, we look at where it all went wrong for Arsenal’s former ‘saviour’, Mesut Ozil…

“Aaron Ramsey is a modern-day top-class midfield player. He is all over the pitch and scores goals. He does the ugly things in football, technically he is very proficient and he will always get you goals. He is a fantastic acquisition for Juventus.

“He is at the peak of his career and I think he is going to have a great two or three years there. He’s a fine acquisition. He has a legacy at Arsenal cemented and I think he’s got out at the right time and he can still be at his peak for a while yet. He had been one of the most consistent Premier League performers.”

The emergence of Joe Willock

Elliott claims that Ramsey left at the right time but Arsenal may well have let him go at the right time too.

Indeed, Joe Willock has been a regular in Unai Emery’s side this season and has the potential to step into the shoes of the Welshman in the future through his liveliness in the middle of the park, tenacity and eagerness to press forward.

With the 20-year-old having featured seven times in the Premier League this season as well as twice in the Europa League, it’s clear that the manager has plans for the Englishman. Willock has two goals in Europe this season, as well as scoring against Nottingham Forest during Arsenal’s 5-0 win in the Carabao Cup.

Emery even insinuated that the youngster can replace Ramsey in the long run after his goal against Standard Liege in the Europa League.

Per The Sun, he said: “My decision was after I saw him the last two months of last season working with us, his really big challenge was that Jack Wilshere left here, Aaron Ramsey left and he had to take that opportunity to be with us.”

Albeit looking from the opposite perspective, what Elliott said about Ramsey was spot on as his departure has effectively paved the way for Willock to show the world what he is about.

Having represented the England U21s for the first time this season, the youngster’s progression as a player continues to accelerate at an impressive rate, which could end with the 20-year-old cementing his status as Ramsey’s swashbuckling midfield successor.

Three days after the first-team registered their third Premier League defeat in a row, the Everton U21s impressed once again in a convincing victory over Burton Albion in the EFL Trophy.Goals from Ellis Simms and Antony Evans ensured the win in the group stage match, giving the young Toffees their second win in the competition after they beat Mansfield Town earlier in the campaign.

David Unsworth’s side are still unbeaten this season, and after registering a draw against Manchester City on Friday and now beating a team 14th in League One, it seems some fans are calling for the youngsters to step up to the first-team in the wake of the poor form.

The senior squad sits 15th, having scored just six goals in eight Premier League games, with the 3-2 victory over Wolverhampton Wanderers the only time Marco Silva’s men have scored more than once in a league game.

Fans are also buzzing over the form of Simms after the 18-year-old bagged an almighty 32 goals in 21 appearances last campaign, now adding another to his collection.

Here’s a look at what Everton supporters said on Twitter after the win over the third-tier side…

The Everton striker is a Sheffield lad born and bred, and due to his affiliation with Sheffield United, he will have wanted to get one over Wednesday.

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The youngster states that he grew up just five minutes away from Hillsborough, so playing there for Everton may have felt a bit surreal for him.

The Carabao Cup can sometimes be seen as a less important fixture by some players and managers, but Calvert-Lewin had the motivation to give it his all on Tuesday, and his efforts were rewarded as he netted twice.

There’s a new way to spell ‘formidable’ and it is: ‘A-n-d-r-e-w R-o-b-e-r-t-s-o-n’ (sorry).The Scotland left-back has made something of a name for himself in recent years as being a clinical creator, alongside his good friend and full-back counterpart, Trent Alexander-Arnold, but it seems he’s turning his talents to goalscoring now as well.Watch Liverpool Live Streams With StreamFootball.tv Below

Last season, the pair combined to create 23 goals in the Premier League (Robertson with 11 and Alexander-Arnold with 12). To put things into perspective, that’s more in one season than Manchester United attacking midfielder Jesse Lingard has produced in 117 appearances. Are they really good or is he just extremely poor? We’ll let you decide.

Aside from having Jurgen Klopp frothing at the mouth to keep them motivated on matchday, the pair seem to have devised an extra incentive amongst themselves in the form of an internal ‘who can create the most’ competition (or something with a punchier line).

And it seems Alexander-Arnold has found the perfect way of stopping his friend from winning…

Not many coaches would want to be in Zinedine Zidane’s shoes right about now. Sure, being at the helm of one of the biggest teams on the planet sounds like a lot of fun but the Frenchman would probably pull out all of his hair at the moment, if he had any left, that is.

Judging by how their pre-season went and how they ended their 2018/19 campaign with defeat after defeat, it was easy to predict the same trends would continue in 2019/20. But they didn’t so far. Or they kind of didn’t, at the very least.

A win and a draw in the first two games is hardly the end of the world but seeing how every new day seems to bring new injuries to Los Blancos, if they continue like this they just might field their Castilla team come the latter stages of the season. And this is what most likely worries Zidane the most.

With six players already out for a while, it’s fair to say that he is very much right to be at least a tiny bit concerned about the whole situation. And to make matters even worse, or better, depending on how you look at it, most of the injured players are actually left-wingers on paper.

This means that Real Madrid will be short on wide players but it also means that they mostly have to worry about how to compensate for the absence of options in just one single area. Besides, not every left-winger in the squad is out injured.

As a matter of fact, Zidane has one more option that he should definitely keep in mind for this weekend’s clash and that’s his young Brazilian talisman, Vinicius Junior. With so many players out of commission for this game on the weekend, the wisest thing for Zidane would be not to tamper and experiment too much or the Galacticos might drop points once again.

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But it seems that going with Vinicius doesn’t seem like the best course of action for everyone at the capital. The youngster had a chance to impress in the last game against Real Valladolid but ended up just slipping under the radar.

He started off the bench and was only introduced in the second half but he failed to make an impression or make any palpable contribution to the result. Soon after that and after this summer’s newcomer Luka Jović was introduced, Vinicius was actually shifted to the opposite side, to the right-wing. And this is when things started going all the way down.

Right from the bat, it was visible the youngster wasn’t really comfortable on the side opposite to his natural position so his performance went mostly unnoticed or rather, noticed for all the wrong things. But if Zidane is going to take one thing from that game then it definitely should not be Vinicius’ “bad performance”.

In fact, he should learn from that mistake of slotting the youngsters into uncharted territory on the right and stick him where he belongs – on the left where he is comfortable and where he knows he’ll make an impact.

It is true that he doesn’t have many options down that flank but that’s even more reason not to put his only viable one out of position. That would most likely be shooting his own foot in the process.

Real Madrid had all sorts of problems in that second fixture of the new campaign but one that is still plaguing them even from last season is their lethality in front of goal or rather, a player who can decide the whole match with his contribution. When he was fit and when he was deployed on that left side, Vinicius was their spark that added pace, skills, constant danger and most important of all, plenty of goals.

His three goals and 12 assists across all competitions in 2018/19 can attest to that as well. The difference between that Vinicius and the one we saw against Valladolid is quite a big one and the funny thing is, most of that comes down to the positioning on the pitch.

It seems like such a trivial thing and yet it’s something that just might make or break Zidane’s next game. It’s not a particularly easy opponent either. Villarreal away from home would sound scary to anyone, let alone to a team that’s still trying to find its groove in the new campaign or even just in general.

Of course, at the moment it does seem like the French coach has a lot to think about in the preparation for the game against the Yellow Submarine but sorting that left-wing should definitely be up there around the very top of the list.

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Shahrukh Khan and Sherfane Rutherford kept GT in the game but they eventually fell well short

Hemant Brar22-May-20252:23

Moody: Marsh has ‘golden ticket’ to intimidate bowlers

Mitchell Marsh scored his maiden IPL hundred, and his second in all T20 cricket, to set the platform for Lucknow Super Giants’ (LSG) 33-run consolation win over Gujarat Titans (GT) in Ahmedabad.Sent into bat, LSG rode on Marsh’s 117 off 64 balls and Nicholas Pooran’s unbeaten 56 off 27 to post a mammoth 235 for 2 on a high-scoring black-soil surface.In reply, GT lost Shubman Gill, B Sai Sudharsan and Jos Buttler in 9.3 overs – the earliest that has happened in IPL 2025 – but their largely untested middle order gave LSG a tough fight. Sherfane Rutherford and Shahrukh Khan added 86 in just 40 balls for the fourth wicket.Related

• Batter-only deal allows Marsh to take 'the game on and intimidate the opposition'

• Gill and Sai Sudharsan 'have learnt how to move through the gears'

• As it happened: Marsh ton gives LSG consolation win against Gujarat Titans

GT needed 54 in the last four overs with six wickets in hand. But after Will O’Rourke dismissed Rutherford with the first ball of the 17th, the chase petered out. The last four overs produced only 20 and not a single boundary.The defeat also hurt GT’s chances of a top-two finish.

GT’s slippery start

GT had a slippery start after they won the toss and put LSG in. Arshad Khan slipped twice in his delivery stride in the second over of the innings. Apparently, there was too much grass around the landing area. Two overs later, the ball slipped out of Kagiso Rabada’s hands. Aiden Markram took evasive action but Hawk-Eye deemed it to be a legal delivery. It showed the ball would have been 1.11 metres high at the batting crease, 2cm below Markram’s waist when standing upright. In between, Marsh and Markram had a few mis-hits and also found some boundaries. By the end of the powerplay, LSG had reached 53 for no loss.1:47

What’s ailing Rashid Khan?

Marsh, Pooran annihilate GT

With two right-handers in the middle, Gill introduced R Sai Kishore into the attack before Rashid Khan. Marsh hit two sixes off his first eight balls but the spinner broke the 91-run opening stand soon after with Markram’s wicket.That brought to the crease Pooran and more carnage. He and Marsh added 121 runs in just 52 balls. Rashid came to bowl the 12th over. Before this game, Marsh had scored only 31 off 33 balls against him. Tonight, he went 6, 4, 6, 4, 4, 1 in his first over.With Pooran in the middle, Gill took the gamble of giving Sai Kishore another over. It did not come off as Pooran farmed the strike and hit the spinner for one six and one four in four balls.Marsh had taken 33 balls for his first fifty. For his second, he needed only 23. Pooran’s fifty also came in 23 balls. In the final over, Rishabh Pant gave a glimpse of what-if as he hit Rabada for two sixes to finish unbeaten on 16 off six balls.Digvesh Rathi wasn’t around but Akash Singh’s notebook was out•AFP/Getty Images

A rare “failure” for Gill, Sudharsan and Buttler

Coming into this game, Gill, Sai Sudharsan and Buttler had scored 76.87% of GT’s bat runs in the season. In their previous game, Gill and Sai Sudharsan had chased down 200 against Delhi Capitals (DC) on their own. The two once again looked sublime and added 46 in 4.3 overs before Sai Sudharsan chipped O’Rourke to mid-off where Markram dived forward to take a low catch.Buttler hit two fours and two sixes off Avesh Khan in the sixth over to keep the momentum going. But in his next over, Avesh had Gill slicing one to Abdul Samad at wide long-off for another excellent catch.Two overs later, Buttler was also back in the pavilion. Akash Singh, who had split his webbing earlier, returned with a heavily strapped right hand and breached Buttler’s defence with a slower one. Akash dedicated the wicket to Digvesh Rathi by bringing out the notebook celebration. After ten overs, GT were 97 for 3 and needed 139 more in the remaining ten.Will O’Rourke’s two-wicket 17th over turned the game in LSG’s favour•BCCI

GT’s middle order stands up

Before this game, GT’s middle order (Nos. 4-7) had the lowest average (21.39) in the league but also the highest strike rate (165.65). In a way, it was a corollary of their prosperous top order. On Thursday, however, GT did not want their middle order to just flash. They wanted them to keep the fire burning.Rutherford and Shahrukh did exactly that. They smashed three fours and three sixes to ransack 36 runs from overs 14th and 15th, bowled by Avesh and Shahbaz Ahmed, respectively. LSG were still the favourites but GT were also in with a fair chance. O’Rourke then dealt the decisive blow. He conceded only four in the 17th over and bookended it with the wickets of Rutherford and Rahul Tewatia. Shahrukh, who had brought up his fifty off 22 balls, swung hard but kept losing his shape as LSG seized control.

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Manchester United’s start to the new campaign got off to a thrilling start as they claimed all three points against Chelsea in dominating fashion.

They were superb going forward as they put four unanswered goals past the Blues to get off the mark with a superb win.

Marcus Rashford, Anthony Martial and Dan James all got on the scoresheet but despite an impressive victory, there was still room for negativity.

Jesse Lingard appeared to be berated by supporters on Twitter for his display as he was targeted on social media.

One fan told him to improve whilst another said that he needed to stay out of the starting XI. A further individual stated that he was terrible, suggesting United wouldn’t win anything with him in the team.

The 26-year-old was also branded as bang average by one supporter as they claimed he was running around like a headless chicken.

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Lingard played 86 minutes against Chelsea on Sunday, finishing the game with a pass success rate of 88.5%, per WhoScored. He managed one key pass and three dribbles too.

Here’s how United fans responded to his showing at the weekend.

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