Former Leeds player, commentator and pundit Noel Whelan has urged Newcastle to make a move over the future of Matty Longstaff due to his contract expiring at the end of the season.
Reports in the Chronicle have suggested that if Longstaff decides against signing on again on Tyneside then he could be departing the club for around £400,000 in compensation fees.
As his contract expires in the summer, that means that Longstaff is free to speak to any foreign club about a deal in the summer as of January 1 – and the previous report states that there are clubs sniffing around, including those from Germany.
Bearing this in mind, Noel Whelan has now come out and given his verdict about what the club needs to do with the player, stating that they need to offer him something worthwhile or face the risk of losing him.
Who is the better Longstaff?
Matty Longstaff
Sean Longstaff
Not sure
Whelan told Football Insider: “£400,000 for a young player of that ability, wow, no team can afford to lose people like that.
“That’s nothing, is it? It’s absolutely nothing, but look, the power is with the player right now, he holds the cards and Newcastle need to realise that.
“Either put something on the table for him that he can’t say no to or he’s doing something for himself. Now, for me as a player, I think right now, maybe, just maybe, he needs more regular first-team football. It might be a team that comes up from the Championship this year on a pre-contract signing.”
Considering his young age, the midfielder still clearly has a lot of unearthed potential. He has played four games this season, scoring twice against Manchester United, proving that he clearly has something a bit special about him in how he could turn up on both occasions.
He celebrated his second with the ice in his veins celebration, and while just 360 minutes in the Premier League is hardly huge amounts of evidence to show how great he could be, the way in which he kept his cool and managed to stamp his authority in such big games bodes well for the future.
For the player, he probably has a strong mandate to try and ask for some more regular football as his contract situation means that he is a strong position for negotiations. His current season shows that he has a lot of potential to be unearthed and the club will really not want to lose a youth player.
There has hardly been an abundance of youth players coming through on Tyneside in recent years. Apart from his brother Sean, Paul Dummett and Andy Carroll there appear to have been very few over the past decade who have cut the mustard at this level.
Considering this, Whelan is right in saying that it’s worth making a decent offer to Longstaff as – as a local lad – he, and the club, are both probably wanting this to continue. The club just needs to show the player that he is valuable to them.