Newcastle United cult hero - Aleksandar Mitrovic

At the end of last season, most of the talk centered around whether or not Rafa Benitez would stay on as first team manager in the Championship. Once that was confirmed, the talk then turned to who would stay, who would go and of course, who we should buy.

Out of the relegation squad there was one player that most fans wanted to stay and that was the young Serbian striker, Aleksandar Mitrovic. The tale of Mitrovic at Newcastle is a pretty strange one as despite having a cult like following at the club, he hasn’t really done all that much on the pitch.

He signed from Anderlecht back in July 2015 for £13m and he came with a bit of a bad boy reputation; something he seemed to live up to as within 22 seconds of his debut he received a yellow card which could very easily have been a red one! Just under 3 weeks later he received a red card in a home fixture against Arsenal and was sent off again during our last game in the Premier League against Spurs. In his first season at the club he scored 9 goals in 36 appearances; certainly nothing to write home about but not all that bad in a season which we performed woefully as a team.

When Mitrovic signed, I knew very little about him. He was a bit of a wonder-kid on the Football Manager game and I’d seen some brief appearances from him in the very few Champions League games I watched when Anderlecht faced English opposition. However, like many fans, I have taken him to my heart. I love Aleksandar Mitrovic but I’m not sure why!

I wrote an article on him a couple of months in to this season as he wasn’t getting a game under Rafa. He had served the 4 match ban he had received from the Spurs sending off at the end of the 15/16 season but he couldn’t get a game ahead of Dwight Gayle. At the time, I was annoyed and frustrated. I wanted to see Mitrovic play and Gayle hadn’t yet started to score all of his goals. Time has passed now and Gayle is playing at a level I genuinely never expected and he is quite rightfully our main man up front. I have at times wondered why Rafa doesn’t try 2 up front but the 4-2-3-1 system is his, it is what his teams have always played and who am I to question that? Seriously though, that’s not meant as a dig at Rafa, if he feels we play best with 1 up front then I am fully behind him!

Recently, when Dwight Gayle has been out injured, Mitrovic has had his chance but has not taken it for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately a gruesome knee injury away at Birmingham put a halt to this for the most part and it is around this period of time that fans have started to question whether Mitrovic deserves the love and adulation he gets in bucket loads.

Rafa and Mitrovic clearly do not see eye to eye in footballing terms. When Rafa took over from McClaren towards the end of last season he rarely picked Mitrovic despite needing results and goals. This season, he has mainly been used as a substitute towards the end of games and the times he has started, he has rarely made much of an impact on the game; often being replaced later on.

Rafa has gone on record to say he substituted Mitrovic in the last game at Wolves – a game which he scored the only goal – to save him from an inevitable red card. This morning, Rafa has spoken to local press about how Mitrovic needs to calm down, how his temperament is a concern. The thing with Rafa though, is he loves a challenge – why else would he be managing Newcastle United?! I think he can see the potential in Mitrovic despite not being his kind of forward; Rafa likes speedy, pacey, players and speedy and pacey are two words you definitely can’t associate with Mitrovic. I think Rafa knows that if he can tame Mitrovic, he will have a cracking player on his hands; whether it is enough to get the top spot from Gayle, or even make Rafa re-think his formation, is another matter entirely.

The one word you can use with Mitrovic is potential. He is still very young, he is hungry, he loves the club and the fans and I must say that the majority of the fans love him. He has strength in abundance and I would put him up with the likes of Alan Shearer and Les Ferdinand when it comes to his aerial presence and heading ability. He just needs to calm down a bit; not too much though, aggression is a good asset to have but he needs to lose the stupidity; he needs to lose stop doing petulant fouls which give him a silly yellow card.

He is a bit of a nut case but you know what? He’s our nut case.