Newcastle desperate not to repeat past mistakes as two EFL clubs eye teenager

Add as preferred source on Google

Newcastle United will not loan out teenager Lewis Miley this summer despite interest from two Championship clubs.

For the longest time Newcastle‘s track record with academy players has been spotty at best. When a young talent has caught the eye we’ve rarely afforded them the care and attention they’ve needed to break through into the first-team set-up, and when they have, they’ve been poorly handled and their progress stalled.

There have been obvious exceptions like Andy Carroll and now Sean Longstaff, but for the most part it was players like Rolando Aarons and Matty Longstaff which were the norm. Even last season we acquired one of the brightest prospects in world football in Garang Kuol and then sent him out on a disastrous loan spell to Hearts.

Newcastle will be keen to avoid the mistakes made in the past

Now it looks like Newcastle are keen to avoid that mistake with 17-year-old Lewis Miley who has captured the imagination of the Toon Army with his debut against Chelsea last season and more recently, his confident displays in pre-season.

Transfer journalist Ben Jacobs was speaking about Miley on NUFC Matters last night and suggested that, despite interest, Miley will be going nowhere this summer, saying: : “The Newcastle plan at the moment is to pretty much auto-reject any loan offers from any clubs, so he is going to stay with the first-team.

“At 17 he looks physical, he looks quite tenacious, he looks quite intelligent on the ball so definitely a big prospect ahead.

“It could well be that the window closes and in January if he’s not getting that many minutes within the first team that’s when they look at a loan deal. I know that there’s a couple of Championship clubs that have enquired and have been unable to get a loan deal. Leicester were taking a little look to see if anything could be possible. I was also told that Stoke City were quite interested in the player as a possible loan deal as well.

“But Newcastle have been quite clear at the moment that if anybody comes in with a loan deal it will be rejected.”

Lewis Miley will be given the chance to prove himself in Newcastle’s first team

Eddie Howe had stated that his plan was to keep Miley around the first-team this season to help his development and give him more Premier League minutes and it seems like he’s sticking by that.

As Jacobs said, there is scope for things to change in January if things aren’t progressing as planned, but Howe and Dan Ashworth will be a lot more careful about where Miley may end up on loan after learning a harsh lesson with Garang Kuol.

Ideally, everything will go as planned with Miley and he’ll still be around to play for Newcastle in the back half of the season too as he looks to be a generational talent already.