At the London Stadium a decision by Eddie Howe caught more attention than the match itself: Newcastle\u2019s in-form forward Nick Woltemade was withdrawn at half-time with his side trailing to West Ham. The substitution felt abrupt. Howe also replaced Anthony Gordon and Emil Krafth at the break, but Woltemade\u2019s removal prompted particular surprise given the form he has shown since joining from Stuttgart in August for an initial \u00a365 million.<\/p>\n
Woltemade\u2019s early months on Tyneside have been influential. He has scored freely \u2014 the montage of his six goals in 11 games celebrating powerful headers, flicks, back-heels and penalties captured that impact and concluded with the line \u201cI ain\u2019t afraid of no goals.\u201d He has been a key attacking presence, offering clever link play and energetic pressing, and he scored in the midweek Carabao Cup victory over Tottenham Hotspur.<\/p>\n
The substitution had a wider ripple effect. More than 600,000 of the 10 million Fantasy Premier League managers transferred Woltemade into their teams for the round, expecting returns. Fans, too, voiced frustration as the forward sat on the bench, wrapped up and withdrawn from the view of supporters, while West Ham recorded their first win under Nuno Esp\u00edrito Santo, with Lucas Paquet\u00e1 and Freddie Potts impressing.<\/p>\n
Tactically the change was curious. Will Osula was introduced to add direct pace behind West Ham\u2019s back four, a style not natural to Woltemade, who links and ghosts into attacking positions and often thrives with a No 9 ahead of him. Yoane Wissa, when fit after his cruciate ligament injury, is expected to offer a complementary presence, and Callum Wilson now plays for West Ham.<\/p>\n
Woltemade is just 23, reportedly exceptionally fit and careful with his energy. He wears 27 at Newcastle for personal reasons while he has worn 11 for Germany and did so at Stuttgart. German supporters have already shown their admiration and there were even disgruntled reactions from Bayern Munich powerbrokers Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Uli Hoene\u00df when he moved. Howe will have to decide how to balance the forward\u2019s form and the fixture congestion ahead in Premier League and Champions League action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Woltemade has settled at Newcastle but Howe’s half-time substitution at West Ham divided opinion yet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4229,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194,172,1125],"tags":[1215,1019],"class_list":["post-4230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newcastle-united","category-epl","category-strikers","tag-controversy","tag-creative-players"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}