Dan Burn reveals Yoane Wissa boost as £55m signing impresses behind the scenes

Newcastle United paid £55 million to sign Yoane Wissa from Brentford in the summer after the striker bagged 19 goals for the Bees last season.

Wissa was expected to be the plug-and-play replacement for Alexander Isak, but a bad knee injury picked up just days after signing set the DR Congo forward's Newcastle career back considerably.

The 29-year-old would already have been facing an uphill battle, having missed so much pre-season training after going on strike to force through a move, and then arriving at Newcastle when the season was already underway. 

With Newcastle competing in teh Champions League, training sessions were very rare, so Wissa would have been on the back foot as it is, but then four months on the sidelines, coming back too early and still not having those sessions have all coalesced into a poor first season for the striker.

After being dumped out of the Champions League, Newcastle's players have had a lot more time together on the training pitch recently, and Eddie Howe has spoken about how Yoane Wissa is looking good in training, but the Congolese forward is still finding minutes hard to come by.

Dan Burn has been impressed with Wissa

When Wissa has been brought on in the last couple of games, he's found himself in some good positions but hasn't been able to do anything with it, blazing over the bar from close range on two occasions. He did, however, notch an assist for Harvey Barnes on Saturday, albeit fortuitously.

After that game, Dan Burn spoke to the media, and he told the Shields Gazette that he likes what he's seeing from Wissa in training.

"I think the last few weeks has really helped some of the lads. Wissa has looked really, really sharp.

“I know that he's probably wanted a better season, but he's looked really, really sharp in training. So I was glad that he came on and showed what he can do.”

A confident Wissa could be a huge asset

At this point, it feels like a confidence issue more than anything else for Wissa. It's like he's so desperate to prove himself to everybody that he's snatching at chances rather than thinking them through.

The Wissa of last season would have buried those chances against Arsenal and Brighton that he put over the bar. He'd probably have scored when he was through on goal late on against Brighton too, instead, he was lucky that the ball rolled into the path of Harvey Barnes.

If Wissa can take that form that everyone is praising him for in training and apply it on the pitch, we could still get some return on our investment, if the club sticks with him after the summer.