Rovers new boy Leon Best has been a prevailing talking point over the last few days with many thinking he’s a shrewd signing whilst others aren’t convinced by a guy with a debatable scoring record.
With this in mind I got in touch with Ed Harrison over at the NUFC Blog who was kind enough to answer some questions on the former Coventry and Magpie man for us.
Hopefully this’ll answer a few questions we have…
Leon Best seems to polarise opinion on Tyneside, what was your making of him during his time at Newcastle?
I think he’s a good striker but he struggled when Chris Hughton first brought him in from Coventry in January of 2010 and he didn’t play many games in the promotion season, furthermore he was injured a lot initially too.
It wasn’t until Alan Pardew brought him into the side at the time Andy Carroll was leaving, about a year later, that Leon played really well, and he scored 6 goals in 12 appearances, including a hat trick against West Ham at the end of the 2010-2011 season.
He stepped up to the plate for us after Andy Carroll left and he really did a job at that time for Newcastle.
At £3 million does this represent good value for Rovers? Or have Newcastle got away with a bit more than they should have?
It’s more than we expected to get for Leon, so it may be a little high, but Leon can score goals, and he could score them in the Championship next season for Blackburn.
It depends if it’s good value – if Leon scores the goals and you come straight back to the Premier League, which is the goal, he’d have been worth it – I’m a fan of Leon’s and I think he will do well at Rovers.
So we’ll see – but maybe the fee is about £1M more than we expected.
Does he have the attributes to make it in the Championship with it being a different style to that of the EPL?
Yes – he scored 10 Premier League goals for Newcastle in 33 appearances – not too shabby, and he scored goals for Coventry in the Championship – 23 goals in about 100 appearances, and he should be a good player for you next season.
He’s physical and has a good eye for goal. If you look on YouTube you’ll see he scored some good opportunist goals for Newcastle.
His goal record doesn’t look that prolific, does he have more to his game than just trying to find the net?
Yes he’s scored about 52 total goals in around 200 total appearances, but he’s a good footballer as well as being able to knock in the goals. It was only when Demba Ba and Papiss Cisse came in that he found it difficult to get a game at Newcastle. I’ll follow him at Blackburn and hope he does well.
And one final thing, I really hope you get straight back up, we went through relegation three years ago and it was just awful, terrible in fact, especially when you have to write about it.
The very best of luck for next season!
A big thanks to Ed for taking the time to answer our questions, you can catch Ed doing his thing over at the Newcastle United Blog.
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