Sky Sports pundit Darren Bent has supported Newcastle United’s decision to release South Korea international Ki Sung-Yueng after 18-months at the club.
The club confirmed that Ki had left St. James’ Park by mutual consent on Deadline Day, having failed to find a suitor for the midfielder who had become heavily out of favour under head coach Steve Bruce.
Ki only featured four times under the boss across all competitions this season, with his last outing in Black and White coming as we lost 5-0 to Leicester City in September where the 31-year-old was brought on at half time.
A minor knock sustained in December meant that the 113-cap international could not help our festive efforts, though would likely have been overlooked anyway after being omitted from the previous nine Premier League squads.
United chiefs had been searching for potential buyers throughout the winter market and offered out his services approaching Deadline Day, as the club needed to free space in the squad for January arrivals Valentino Lazaro, Nabil Bentaleb and Danny Rose.
Bent has agreed with the Toon’s decision to seek an early termination to Ki’s £40,000-per-week contract, which was set to expire in the summer.
Did Ki deserve more minutes under Bruce?
Yes
No
“He was a good player, he was a good signing but maybe it was time to leave,” Bent told Football Insider. “He hasn’t really impacted Newcastle the way we hoped.
“It’s probably good business for all concerned, you’d expect him to go and get another club somewhere else because he’s a talented footballer.”
Ki moved to Tyneside in the summer of 2018 as a free agent following his release by Swansea City, and proved to be a solid squad option under Rafa Benitez during a campaign disrupted by Achilles tendon problems and international duty.
The 31-year-old was far from anything particularly special, though, and being last one Bruce’s pecking list left the club with no choice but to seek a way to offload his wages ahead of becoming a free agent in the summer.
Of the nine players to feature in a central midfield role under Benitez in ’18/19, Ki ranked seventh for successful tackles per 90 minutes in the Premier League with an average of 1.0. He also ranked seventh for shots taken (0.5), fifth for passes blocked (0.6) and ninth for successful dribbles (0.4), but third for interceptions (1.3) and key balls (1.1), per WhoScored data.
His sample pool for the current campaign is far smaller having only started one of his three top-flight outings, which makes comparisons to Bruce’s favoured options too unbalanced for a valid reference.
In other Newcastle United news, the club risk missing out on Bruce’s number one January target again following the player’s reported decision.