Eddie Howe quizzed on Will Osula’s future after Newcastle strike scores again

One of the big mysteries surrounding Newcastle United as the summer window creeps ever closer is how the club will solve their striker problem.

Nick Woltemade was a last-minute panic buy after Newcastle had seen so many other targets slip away. However, he showed early promise and has shown plenty of signs since then. Even though he currently doesn't quite fit Eddie Howe's system, there's a very talented player there, and if we can figure out how to get the best out of him, we've got quite the player on our hands.

Yoane Wissa wasn't a panic buy in the sense that he was miles down on our list, but the fact that we paid £55 million for him on deadline day shows our desperation. That gave the DR Congo striker a lot to live up to, which he simply hasn't done. There have been mitigating factors here, obviously, but his two huge misses in teh last two games stink of a player devoid of confidence.

Then there's Will Osula. A player who divides the fanbase over whether he's actually good or not. A bit of a headless chicken who has that Miguel Almiron thing going on, where, if given time to think, he'll make the wrong decision, but acting on instinct, he's got an X factor that we just don't have anywhere else.

Newcastle are likely going to recruit a new striker in the summer, which suggests that one of the aforementioned three may have to make way, and for the longest time, you'd have assumed that would be Will Osula. He came close to joining Frankfurt at the end of the summer window, and were he not injured in January, that deal was still on the table. Even Aston Villa were interested. It looked like Osula's time was coming to a premature end.

Eddie Howe wants to keep hold of Will Osula

However, he's now the first-choice striker, he's scored three goals in his last four games, and Eddie Howe spoke very highly of him in his post-match press conference on Saturday, even going as far as saying he'd love to keep hold of the young Dane.

“I would definitely like to keep him…I think Will’s a player of really rich promise and he was when we signed him.

“We signed him with the view of developing him to try and build him to become a Premier League player, because that certainly wasn’t the player that we recruited.

“There was a lot of work and time that has gone into his development. Graeme Jones and Jason Tindall have done an incredible job helping his development, analysing his game, feeding back to him, and Will has done really well to stay stable, level, and commit to that development and see the longer-term plan.

“Great to see, then, when he comes into the team and gets an opportunity that he grabs it. He is very hungry, he is very motivated, he believes in himself.”

We're Team Osula here at the Blog

Hopefully, we will keep hold of Osula. He's still not the finished article by any means, but he's scoring goals and putting in the effort that we've been lacking a fair bit this season.

There's definitely a top player in him if he can just calm himself down, and our worry is that we use his recent form to bump up his asking price and make the sale in the summer, and then he goes elsewhere and develops further and becomes a top-class player, and we're left kicking ourselves for letting him go.

We only signed him for £15 million, so if we could get £30m-£40m, we'd be making good money, but is it worth the risk of losing another player who could have developed into a first-team regular? I mean, that's what our whole schtick is supposed to be now.