Eddie Howe says 26-year-old Newcastle player had his ‘best game in a long time’ against Fulham

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It wasn’t a vintage Newcastle United performance against Fulham but Eddie Howe has claimed that one player had his best game in a long time on Saturday.

Newcastle booked their place in the fifth round of the FA Cup this weekend with a 2-0 win over their Premier League rivals and it looks to have instilled a bit of confidence back into the group.

Howe, in his press conference, identified Sean Longstaff as one of the key players in that game and suggested that he looked back to his best after what’s been a tricky couple of months for the whole team.

Howe was ‘very pleased’ with Newcastle midfielder

It’s safe to say Longstaff hasn’t been at his absolute best as of late, but then again very few Newcastle players have or they wouldn’t have been on a run of eight defeats in their last 10 coming into the tie.

That’s not for a lack of effort, the 26-year-old very rarely has a game where he’s not run himself into the ground for the team, his manager and his supporters.

But the quality in midfield just hasn’t been there recently. Considering the positions he gets himself into you’d expect Longstaff to be scoring a lot more goals than he does, and that’s exactly what he did against Fulham.

While there’s still a lot to work on if they are to get anything from Aston Villa tomorrow, Howe was still very pleased with what he saw from the North Shields-born midfielder and will be hoping he can continue that throughout the rest of Newcastle’s season.

In his press conference, Howe said: “Sean I thought had his best game in a long time against Fulham so I was really pleased with his performance.”

Newcastle are still in midfield crisis

Newcastle and Howe have been looking for a midfielder pretty much since they learned that Sandro Tonali would be receiving a 10-month ban back at the start of the season, but the financial rules have limited what they can do.

Fast forward a few months and Newcastle are somehow even more desperate for a new player after Joelinton picked up an injury that will keep him out for the season and Joe Willock is still yet to return to training.

It was initially believed that Kalvin Phillips would be priority number one as a stop gap until the summer, but the loan fee and transfer demands proved to be too much and he has now signed for West Ham.

This leaves the Magpies in a very tricky position especially with Bruno Guimaraes one yellow card away from a two-game ban so they are now looking for any way they could bring in a midfielder in the final few days of the January window.