Newcastle United's £15m man named in WhoScored's FA Cup Team of the Round

Newcastle United and Birmingham City played out a full-blooded FA Cup tie on Saturday with the Magpies emerging victorious thanks to a Joe Willock brace and a goal from Callum Wilson.

Eddie Howe made nine changes to the starting lineup from the side that beat Arsenal on the Wednesday before in a bid to keep his top players as fresh as possible to focus on the Premier League campaign.

As mentioned, Joe Willock and Callum Wilson both seized their opportunities by finding the net, but neither of those two made it onto WhoScored?'s Team of the Round.

Newcastle United had just one representative on the stats-based team, and it may surprise a few people.

Will Osula was chosen in WhoScored's Team of the Round

Newcastle's £15 million summer signing, Will Osula started the game out of position, deployed as a right winger, and he seemed to relish the challenge.

While there's no doubt he's still a bit raw, his energy and desire to get the team moving forward were relentless, and WhoScored gave him a score of 7.98, which was good enough to land him the right wing spot on their Team of the Round.

There has been some debate over whether Osula actually had a good game, particularly in a NUFC WhatsApp group I'm in. Hopefully, this will swing those dissenters to the right side.

Will Osula's future is very exciting

Again, we're not saying that Osula should be starting every week or anything like that, but if Eddie Howe is following the Lewis Hall model, it's probably time to start using him more often.

He's clearly still got some rough edges to refine, but he can't do that without match experience, so if we could see him coming off the bench more often towards the end of the season and building his confidence up ahead of playing a bigger role next season, we'd have no complaints.

We've seen glimpses of what he can do. That goal against Bromley in the third round was certainly not a fluke. We are excited about Osula's future.