Brighton v Newcastle United: Brighton boss Fabian Hurzeler has heaped praise on Newcastle United striker Nick Woltemade.
Fabian Hurzeler has admitted that his side will find it ‘a challenge’ to keep Nick Woltemade out of the headlines on Saturday. Newcastle United travel to the south coast searching for back-to-back Premier League victories for the first time since April.
However, they haven’t emerged from the Amex Stadium with three points in their last eight visits and were defeated twice by Hurzeler’s side in league and cup action last season. Eddie Howe, therefore, may look towards his new record buy to inspire a win at the weekend.
And Hurzeler has admitted that he has been impressed by Woltemade’s start to life in England, praising his compatriot for settling at his new club so quickly: “First of all I’m very happy for him. I think it’s not easy to come to the Premier League and adapt that quickly,” the Brighton boss told Stadium Astro.
“He’s a special profile. He’s a tall player but also technical.
“He’s very good. A good execution of small actions in small spaces and he’s a great goalscorer. Overall, he’s a full package of a player, he has a lot of strengths and a lot of self confidence at the moment so it will be a challenge to defend him.”
Woltemade will head to the Amex Stadium as a man in-form having netted on in three successive matches for his club. Goals in back-to-back home games against Arsenal and Nottingham Forest sandwiched a delightful effort in the Champions League away at Union Saint-Gilloise for the tall German who also scored his first ever senior international goal on Monday night against Northern Ireland.
Nick Woltemade silences criticism from Germany
Those goals have begun to silence criticism from Germany that emerged in the wake of Woltemade’s £69m move from Stuttgart to St James’ Park. The 23-year-old had been heavily-linked with a move to Bayern Munich before the Magpies swooped for his signature.
Following his move to England, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge blasted the fee that Newcastle United paid for the striker, telling Blickpunkt Sport: “I'll be honest: When this story with Woltemade and then the demand from Stuttgart came up, I, said as well as Uli Hoeness folks, we're slowly getting to a level that I simply don't find acceptable anymore.
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“We shouldn't fulfill every demand to make someone happy, especially the financiers at VfB Stuttgart. I can only congratulate those in Stuttgart for finding - I'll use quotation marks here - an idiot who paid that much money. Because we certainly wouldn't have done that in Munich.”
All Woltemade can do, and has been doing, to silence those critics is score goals. Whilst those comments won’t impact how Newcastle United fans take to their new striker, it has certainly increased their love and support for ‘Big Nick’.
In a recent survey conducted by the Shields Gazette, Newcastle United supporters were asked whether they believed that the Magpies had ‘overpaid’ for Woltemade. A staggering 90.9% of respondents disagreed with that statement, believing that the German had already done enough in his first month at the club to justify his club-record price tag.
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