Dutch and go as Toon bid farewell to De Jong
JINXED MIDFIELDER MOVES ON
SIEM de Jong’s return to Ajax in a £4m deal will be tinged with regret for all concerned.
Disbelief was the overriding emotion among Newcastle United fans when Emmanuel Riviere left earlier this month, so shocked were they that any other club would even want to sign a forward who has failed to score in more than two years.
But in contrast there will always be, for both the attacking midfielder De Jong himself and Magpies supporters, a lingering sense of what might have been.
A player whose technical ability is undoubted, De Jong’s three years on Tyneside were disastrous.
The Magpies invested £6m in the former Ajax captain in 2014 and Alan Pardew even hoped to build his team around him.
Instead, just 26 appearances and two goals arrived during 38 injuryravaged months in black-and-white.
Unfortunately, from the moment he tore a muscle just weeks after joining the club, the writing appeared to be on the wall.
Nobody doubts De Jong’s footballing brain; unfortunately, serious concerns still remain about the durability of the rest of his body.
De Jong has been arguably the unluckiest man in football as far as injuries are concerned.
The 28-year-old suffering everything from a freak trainingground accident, where the aforementioned Riviere inadvertently poked the Dutchman in the eye, almost costing him his sight, to a collapsed lung.
True, he was able to secure gametime on loan at PSV Eindhoven last season – six goals arrived in 10 Eredivisie starts as De Jong was able to regain at least some fitness and form back in his native Netherlands.
But the demands of an entire Premier League campaign would have offered a physical examination far beyond anything the Dutchman experienced in 2016/17.
Rafa Benitez used Ayoze Perez and Mo Diame in the No 10 role at Newcastle last season, but neither
quite made the position their own, even if the former has started the new term well. Clearly greater creativity is needed for this attacking midfield position – with Benitez continuing to stick with his favoured 4-2-3-1, an inventive No 10 is still needed to unlock Premier League defences.
Some have argued that United already had that in De Jong.
Clearly De Jong – whose contract ran until 2020, but has now returned to Ajax in a £4m deal – has the ingenuity to succeed in the English top flight.
But could Benitez really have gone into a Premier League campaign relying upon a man who has averaged less than 15 league games a season over the last four years?
With Benitez desperately in need of reducing the wage bill at Newcastle – as well as the size of his squad – moving on De Jong, a player who was only ever going to be afforded a bit-part role at best, makes sense.
Siem de Jong, just like his younger brother Luuk, will rue his misfortune on Tyneside – but the reality is the midfielder simply had to move on in order to revive his career.
He will depart with the best wishes of Newcastle fans, who will always wonder: if only he’d stayed fit...