Newcastle’s £69m mistake is coming back to bite

It's tough to ignore the elephant in the room when he's 6ft 6ins.

Key points

• If Woltemade was a bad fit for Eddie Howe he feels even more of a mismatch for Matthias Jaissle.
• Nothing we saw against West Brom, a game Championship side who were picked apart three times, suggests he's regarding to turn a corner in Jaissle's system.
• In what promises to be a hectic final week of the transfer window, Nick Woltemade is one to watch.
• "Hard worker" was how Jaissle described him afterwards and it's not a difficulty of effort.
• He was a panic purchase, signed by a transfer committee that wasn't fit for purpose who had been engulfed by chaos all summer.

In what promises to be a hectic final week of the transfer window, Nick Woltemade is one to watch. A year on from becoming their club record signing, his future as a Newcastle United player feels increasingly uncertain.

In some ways he is not to blame. He was a panic purchase, signed by a transfer committee that wasn't fit for purpose who had been engulfed by chaos all summer. Woltemade was the last man standing in a transfer window when Newcastle missed out on all their top targets and they wound up recruiting someone who was never a natural fit for a press that was meant to be relentless. It was those failures that informed this summer's more proactive attitude in the transfer window.

If Woltemade was a bad fit for Eddie Howe he feels even more of a mismatch for Matthias Jaissle. This person has cranked the volume up to 11 in a bid to obtain Newcastle playing rock and roll football. With no European football he has a licence to demand intensity in every match – but that is just not Woltemade's game.

"Hard worker" was how Jaissle described him afterwards and it's not a difficulty of effort. Perhaps it would be better if it was since then you could see Jaissle getting inside his head and getting more out of him. The matter is that he can't press like Will Osula, the striker whose injury makes Newcastle's efforts to sign a forward in the next few days even more critical.

He additionally can't break from deep like Wissa. This person produced such a difference doing that against Liverpool. Woltemade is a striker-cum-playmaker, the sort who would surely prosper in La Liga or the Bundesliga, the division where he scored 12 goals in the breakout season that convinced a panicked Newcastle to sign him.

But the Premier League? Nothing we saw against West Brom, a game Championship side who were picked apart three times, suggests he's regarding to turn a corner in Jaissle's system.

In short, newcastle's £69m mistake is coming back to bite is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.