Filed under: Newcastle, Premier League, Football
So let's get this straight, Joey Barton isn't worth a new contract at Newcastle United, but Shola Ameobi is?We always knew the club operated on a parallel reality to most, but if anything sums up a crazy last couple of months on Tyneside, it's news that dear old Shola has extended his current deal in a move that will to all intent and purposes see him finish his career at St James' Park.
Let's be blunt about it. Frankly, that's quite astonishing. Not just the Barton snub, more the fact that a player who has hung around the fringes more than a mediocre comedian each August in Edinburgh, should have managed to earn such a handsome amount of remuneration for really doing very little for the past 11 years.
That's how long it is since Ameobi - one of the nicest blokes you could ever wish to meet, from a lovely family, too, but that still doesn't make him anything more than an average footballer - took his bow in a Newcastle shirt, September 2000, against Chelsea.
Since then, the forward, who turns 30 in October, has warmed the bench so many times, he should have one of those ridiculous car bucket seats now found in the majority of Premier League dugouts named in his honour.
There's just the nagging doubt here that with this new contract, Newcastle are doing no more than rewarding mediocrity, while at the same time allowing their blue-chip performers Kevin Nolan and Barton, to leave. Like we say, skewed logic.
On a staggering 119 occasions, Ameobi has been used as a substitute down the years by a succession of Newcastle managers too numerous to mention here - we'll list them at the end if you want to test yourself - yet he's never seemingly taken the hint or indeed felt compelled to move from his Tyneside comfort zone on to another club, one where he could call himself a regular.
Why would you I suppose, when in that time, he's also racked-up 184 starts - that's a modest average of 16-and-a-half in each of his 11 seasons - scoring 70 goals in the process, enough, the club's official website excitedly tells us, to put him 19th in Newcastle's list of all-time top scorers. Yes, that's 19th.
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