Joe Thomlinson has admitted on the Football Daily YouTube channel that Sven Botman has been superb since making his Newcastle United debut.
Despite being a long-term target for Newcastle and Eddie Howe, Botman wasn’t immediately handed a starting role when he was finally brought to the club, missing out on the first game of the season. However, he has never looked back since.
Since making his debut against Brighton & Hove Albion, he’s only failed to start in two league games, with one of them being the only match the Magpies have tasted defeat in – which goes to show how much of an impact he’s made on the defence so quickly.
While picking his Premier League Team of the Season so far, Thomlinson has labelled Botman as ‘freakish’ because of how good he is at such a young age.
He said: “[He] has just hit the Premier League like a train. Already one of the outstanding young centre-backs in Europe, in my opinion.
“The fact that Newcastle got him over the line is not only testament to the job Eddie Howe’s done, but also the top executives that have managed to get that deal over the line.
“I think that is almost on par with Bruno Guimaraes in terms of quality of signing – not quite, because we’ve seen what Bruno’s done over a longer period now, but the calibre of names to be arriving at Newcastle in the form of Sven Botman at his age is just freakish, and he is just a Rolls-Royce of a player.”
Has Botman been Newcastle's best signing?
Yes!
No!
TIF Thoughts on Sven Botman’s form…
Despite starting just 12 games for Newcastle, Botman is clearly already turning heads, and being labelled as one of the best young centre-backs across the whole of Europe is exciting for the Magpies to know they could have a top-class defender within their ranks for many years to come.
While the club’s pursuit of Botman was a long and difficult one, having been up against Milan and also saw numerous bids rejected in January for the defender, PIF will be calling back on it as a great value-for-money signing which was labelled as ‘perfect‘ by BBC pundit Danny Murphy this season.
It’s not just his defending that has already become so important to Newcastle, his passing ability is clearly something that become a key asset. The Dutchman currently boasts the best long-pass completion percentage out of players to have started more than two league games, while he also has the best medium-pass completion percentage of outfield players (as per FBref).
However, this kind of form wasn’t enough to earn him a place in the Netherlands’ World Cup squad heading to Qatar, which may well have been pre-empted given the defender withdrew himself from the Under-21s squad not too long ago despite being fit enough to play.