Daniel Sturridge seriously impressed with 23-year-old Newcastle player’s passing

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Newcastle United’s 5-1 victory over Aston Villa on Saturday turned a lot of heads as did the performance of The Magpies’ new signing Sandro Tonali.

Sandro Tonali showed fans and pundits exactly why Eddie Howe made him his primary target this summer, scoring after just six minutes and then going on to be involved in two more of Newcastle‘s goals, Tonali had the best Newcastle debut since Papiss Cisse (also against Aston Villa).

After the game on Saturday Jamie Redknapp was in awe of Tonali’s ability and waxed lyrical on Sky Sports about the midfielder’s game saying: “Sandro Tonali is a lovely player to watch. He’s so elegant and the game is effortless for him.

Sky Sports pundits have been very impressed with Tonali for Newcastle

“It was one of the most impressive debuts from a midfielder I’ve seen in this league.

“He’s got a terrible habit of passing the ball to a player in the same team!”

It seems that Redknapp wasn’t the only Sky Sports pundit who was impressed with the 23-year-old Italy international.

Speaking live on Sky Sports on Sunday, Daniel Sturridge, making his debut as a pundit, admitted he was very impressed with Tonali saying: “Oh la, la. The passing abilities are magnificent, magnificent”.

Tonali was dubbed “The New Pirlo” when he burst onto the scene, and while he’s always downplayed that comparison and likened himself more to Gennaro Gattuso, his passing display on Saturday will only have added fuel to the Andrea Pirlo fire.

Tonali reads the game so well he’s three steps ahead of everyone else

It’s almost as if Tonali sees his next pass before his team mate has even passed the ball to him, he reads the game so well. The perfect example was Newcastle’s fourth goal, the little one-touch pass through to Harvey Barnes who squared it for Callum Wilson, that pass looked simple at first glance, but he had to know where at least three players were going to be to pull that off and then weight it perfectly for Barnes with just the one touch.

Alongside Bruno Guimaraes in that midfield and whomever is charged with completing that middle three, be it Joelinton, Sean Longstaff, Elliot Anderson or someone else, it’s hard to think of a better midfield in the Premier League.

I can’t wait to see how he handles the challenge on Saturday down at the Etihad when we take on Manchester City. That’s when we’ll know what kind of player he really is.