Alan Shearer has come out and defended Newcastle United forward Dwight Gayle for his performance against Chelsea.
The 30-year-old, valued at £7.2m on Transfermarkt, didn’t have the greatest of games at Stamford Bridge, as he was forced to play in the right side of a front line rather than through the middle, which led to some rather harsh comments from the Geordie faithful, with some claiming he didn’t offer all that much.
But speaking on the Pod On The Tyne Podcast on Tuesday, said that it was rather unfair for him to get any sort of criticism because he was playing out of position in a system that doesn’t naturally suit him, whilst who they were playing on the day might also need to be taken into account.
He said: “Dwight Gayle is a striker who wants to get in and around the six-yard box. It would probably be slightly harsh to judge him on last night’s performance because it’ll be slightly easier and slightly better for him and the team, I think, if they were to play at home against a lesser team, perhaps against Wolves, would be a better barometer to judge him on but no, that role last night didn’t suit him.”
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TIF Thoughts on Alan Shearer’s comments about Dwight Gayle…
Shearer is right to say he was out of position – if you take a look at Gayle’s career, the vast majority of it has been played through the middle, and whilst his record in the Premier League isn’t the greatest, it isn’t going to be helped by him being played out wide where he’s arguably going to be focused on creating goals rather than scoring them.
With main forward Callum Wilson injured for the foreseeable future, it’s only natural for Steve Bruce to try and tweak things to mitigate his loss, but there has to be a much better way of doing it than this.