In the morning of Wednesday 16th of August, Spanish player Jose Mato (known as Joselu) signed for Newcastle United from Stoke for a £5million fee. But how good is he and what can we expect from him?
Career round-up
His senior career started in 2008 with Celta Vigo, (who he had previously played Youth football with) however he spent the first year playing for their B side where he scored 3 goals in 21 games. When he was still 18 (2009) he was moved up to the first team, where he only played 3 games scoring none. That summer he signed for Real Madrid, who immediately loaned him back to Celta Vigo for an extra season ; a bit like what we did with Lascelles and Darlow. In that season he performed about the same as he did in the 08-09 season, this time scoring 4 in 24 games. On his return to Madrid for the 2010-11 season, he was playing for the Castilla side where he was their top goalscorer alongside future Chelsea striker Alvaro Morata. Together with the rest of the squad they took Real Madrid Castilla to the La Liga 2 play-offs; (non champions promotion play-offs) Crashing out in the semi finals. He eventually got his chance in the Real Madrid first team where he scored 2 in 2 games.
Since then he's played for 5 different clubs (all in the top divisions of their countries) including Deportivo last season where he scored against Real Madrid and Barcelona. he also played for a season at Stoke City scoring 4 and getting 1 assist. He also played International football for Spain at U19, U20 and U21 level before playing 1 game for amateur national team Galicia
His Wikipedia record:
Expectations
Joselu is very tall and knows how to head a ball on target, scoring quite a lot of headers in his career. However he doesn't like to get physical like how Daryl Murphy used to. He doesn't score goals as much as you would think for a forward, instead his main focus is on passing and link up play. We can expect Joselu to be a third or second striker for the mags. But he's a good prospect, lets show him some love!