Newcastle have told left-back Achraaf Lazaar to stay away from the club’s training ground, despite his offer to help solve the club’s problem in his position, a report from The Chronicle has claimed.
Things have never really worked out for Lazaar since he joined from Palermo in 2016, with the Moroccan making just ten appearances for the Magpies and spending time on loan elsewhere.
With Newcastle badly struggling for numbers at left-back, Lazaar had apparently seen a way back in for himself at St James’ Park, although it now seems as though that will not be the case.
According to the latest reports, Lazaar had offered to return to Newcastle and help deal with the lack of options at left-back, but the 28-year-old has been told to stay away from the club, and the defender continues to train on his own in Sardinia for now.
That is something that is said to have “baffled” Lazaar, given that he is currently being paid £35,000 a week by the club, and it remains to be seen what comes next for the full-back.
With just one year remaining on his contract at Newcastle, you would imagine the club will now try to sell Lazaar, in order to get him off the wage bill and receive some sort of a fee, before he is able to leave for free in 12 months time.
However, the fact that he has struggled to really catch the eye anywhere since his move to St James’ mean you feel it is going to be hard to take any club to take a chance on him, particularly with Newcastle seemingly unwilling to do that even with something of a crisis in his position.
That is only going to be exaggerated by the cost that would be required to take him off the Magpies hands – not least with those wages – and as such it may be something of a surprise if Lazaar is to find himself a new club over the coming months, meaning this would go down as yet another bad piece of business by the club.