'He looked the part': Newcastle United insider now says which summer signing has impressed on training ground
Newcastle United made some big moves in the summer transfer window, including breaking their transfer record to bring in a largely unproven centre-forward.
While Nick Woltemade is looking like a fan favourite player already, thanks to his four goals in five games, there has been another summer signing who is impressing just as much, and he also happens to be German.
Malick Thiaw finally became a Newcastle player this summer after two years of scouting and a year on from when we all thought he was Toon-bound.
As Mark Douglas writes in the iPaper, we all expected it to take time for Malick Thiaw to step in and replace Fabian Schar in the Newcastle defence, but fate had other ideas.
Malick Thiaw impressed the Newcastle coaches straight away
Fabian Schar's tendency to pick up one head injury per game finally caught up with him when he used his face to block a rasping Marcus Rashford shot against Barcelona, forcing him to miss 12 days through concussion protocols. This meant Thiaw had to be thrown into the starting lineup, and the German defender hasn't looked back since.
Eddie Howe paired Thiaw with Sven Botman to try out his new-look defensive partnership that is set to anchor the Magpies' back line for years to come, and the pair are doing so well that it's hard to see Fabian Schar and Dan Burn getting their places back unless there's a pressing need to swap things around.
It's no coincidence that Thiaw has settled so quickly, either, as one club insider said, "As soon as he came in, he looked the part." It seems that Malick Thiaw didn't want to wait around for his chance and was working towards that first-team spot from the moment he arrived on Tyneside.
Malick Thaiw's form creates a problem for Fabian Schar
Fabian Schar turns 34 in December and can talk to clubs about a summer move from January, so Eddie Howe has a big call to make on the Swiss centre-back.
We're sure that Howe would love to keep Schar around and would like to see him sign a new deal, but if he's not going to be assured of a place in the team each week, could Schar maybe start thinking about looking elsewhere?
We hope that he opts to stick around and see out his career at St James' Park, but we'd absolutely understand if he wanted to move on, and he would be leaving us in very safe hands with Malick Thiaw.
