Demba Ba gushes over Ewen Jaouen ahead of £24m Newcastle move

Demba Ba was one of the best strikers Newcastle United have had since Alan Shearer hung up his boots.

Papiss Cisse arrived at Newcastle and seemed to step on Demba Ba's toes, and he ultimately left Newcastle for Chelsea, but had he stayed, he could have become a genuine legend on Barrack Road.

He is still very fondly remembered, though, and it seems that he's still very keen on what's happening at Newcastle, as he's been speaking about the Magpies' latest acquisition.

Although nothing is finalised yet, it looks very much like 20-year-old goalkeeper Ewen Jaouen is Newcastle-bound and could be in the North East early next week to put the finishing touches on the £24m move.

Demba Ba has heaped praise on Ewen Jaouen

Meanwhile, Demba Ba, who is sporting director and part-owner at French side Dunkerque, where Jaouen spent a season on loan, has been speaking to the iPaper about the young keeper, and it sounds like we're getting quite the player.

“We are a club that develops players – he came to us with just seven senior games but we decided to make him our No 1 goalkeeper.

“Unfortunately his first two games were not great, he had made a couple of mistakes which cost us some points but we’d decided to go with a goalkeeper who was 18 so we had to be prepared for him to make some mistakes.

“After a couple of games he got booed by the fans and our coach eventually decided to take him out of the side to protect him. We had another goalkeeper [Adrian Ortola] who was a little bit more experienced so the coach changed it.

“The kid took it very well, we talked to him and he was like ‘I made mistakes, I need to get better’. Because he’s a very quiet guy you don’t know if he was hearing it the right way or how it felt about it so I paid a lot of attention to him and his confidence.

“I think that was the best thing for him and his career. Why? Because right after this he became the second goalkeeper for a few games, he accepted it, he stepped aside and he grew so much.

“He was looking at the first choice goalkeeper at the time – Ortola – and from my point of view he’s the best goalkeeper in France, first or second division, to build from the back. He learned a hell of a lot from him when it came to playing from back and short passes.

“He looked at the other goalkeeper and instead of being mad because he took his spot he took a step back, looked at how the goalkeeper was doing and well and learned.

“Two months from the end of the season the number one got injured so Jaouen came back in and was a different beast.”

The more we hear, the more excited we get

A goalkeeper we can rely on to build from the back? Where do we sign? No longer will we have to suffer cardiac events whenever someone passes the ball back to our goalkeeper along the floor.

The more we see and hear about this kid, the better he sounds. We're still not sure if he's ready to be the first-choice in the Premier League, but it doesn't sound like it will take him long to get there.

We're still hoping that we also move to bring in one of the priority choices that we've been linked with for months, such as James Trafford, but if we don't manage to do that and we keep Nick Pope, would you take a chance on Jaouen as No.1? We would.