Newcastle take on Rayo Vallecano tomorrow at St James’ Park in a final warm-up game before club football returns to competitive action and the game will have a special meaning for one Rayo player who used to ply his trade at St James’ Park.
French defender, Florian Lejeune, formerly of this parish, will be back to face his former club after being sold to Eibar by the previous manager, Steve Bruce despite Lejeune being, probably our best defender at the time next to Fabian Schar.
The Chronicle exclusively caught up with Lejeune ahead of the fixture who is looking forward to catching up with old friends, most of whom he never even got the chance to say goodbye to.
“It is a friendly game but one which is brimming in emotion, full of pleasure and a host of other feelings for me as it will be great to catch up with some former team-mates with whom we spent some great times together,” Lejeune told The Chronicle. “We shared a lot of laughs and lots of memories together.
“Also, catching up with the physio and other members of staff at the club. For me, it is really important to have this chance to see them again and to spend a little time with them.
“Unfortunately, I never really had a proper chance to say goodbye to them there so I sincerely hope I’ll get a chance to do it this week. I also really want to thank everyone for all of the great support I received for so many years, whether this was after each game or even when I was suffering from injury. I received a lot of messages and I really do want to be able to thank everyone.”
Lejeune had his fair share of injuries during his time at Newcastle, but when he played it was clear that he had the talent, and as I said, for me, he was probably our best centre-back alongside Fabian Schar, but for some reason the Baron of Bacon just didn’t fancy him, with Lejeune saying “It was all the more difficult for me personally because I knew that I was more than capable of being a big part of the team but, unfortunately, with the manager [Steve Bruce] in place at the time, it was clear that I was not in his plans and we didn’t share the same vision of the game.”
I don’t think many actual players with any talent shared Bruce’s vision of the game to be fair, so I can totally see where he’s coming from here.
Newcastle lost a good player when Lejeune left, but we will always remember those two stoppage-time goals against Everton.