Newcastle United midfielder Sean Longstaff has said that Tottenham counterpart Christian Eriksen was a nightmare to play against this season.
The Danish international helped Spurs reach the Champions League final, where they lost to Liverpool, while they finished behind the Reds and Manchester City in their third place Premier League finish.
Having come up against Spurs in what was just his fourth top flight start back in February, Longstaff said Eriksen’s movement and ability to evade attention made him seriously difficult to play against, with Tottenham winning 1-0 at Wembley.
Asked who his toughest opponent was this season, the homegrown talent told the NUFC TV Youtube channel: “Probably, for me when we played Tottenham I thought Eriksen was really good, he was really tough to play against.
“He just sort of drifts wherever he wants and you couldn’t really pick him up. Him and Son were really good.”
Opinion
You might think that as a youngster playing in his first couple of games Longstaff would not have come up against as much quality as Eriksen but you would be horribly wrong. The born-and-bred Newcastle midfielder was handed a real baptism of fire during his first couple of games for the club, coming on as a substitute against Liverpool for his Premier League debut before facing Chelsea, Cardiff and Manchester City in his next three games, all of which came in the starting XI. Eriksen must have really made his mark on Longstaff to have been singled out as his top performer for an opposition side. For Spurs, they might have seen the last of Eriksen with the Danish maestro at the heart of plenty of transfer speculation this summer. For Newcastle, they will be hoping to see much more of Longstaff as he makes his mark among the elite of English football.