If Albert Luque, he's the £9.5million Spanish misfit/flop/waste of money we paid Deportivo la Coruna the Earth for two years ago in case you’d forgot, starts this pre-season the same way he started the last one, we could be in for an unexpected surprise.
Luque’s career under Graeme Souness never really started well after the Spanish international picked up an injury early on in his time in Toon.
And by the time he got back to full fitness Newcastle were heading for the Championship and Souness was heading for the dole office!
Fresh start under Glenn Roeder then?
Not likely, Glenn and Alberto just didn’t hit it off and by the end of Roeder’s time at St James’ Park they weren’t even doing eye contact, let alone speaking terms!
But you’ve got to be in it to win it in football and Luque still somehow has one finger on the edge of the cliff.
He has lost his shirt to Joey Barton but that doesn’t seem like the end.
Because Sam Allardyce has kindly offered to review the Luque situation and somehow try to rediscover the player that once yielded over 50 goals in Spain’s La Liga.
Many might say good luck Big Sam, but if the guy can somehow revive the careers of rebels like El Hadji Diouf, Kevin Davies or Super Nik Anelka, Luque will probably seem like a cakewalk for the new Toon boss.
And he wouldn’t be the first player to come back from the dead after losing the number 7 shirt on Tyneside.
Ask Rob Lee!
Back then the number 7 was famously handed to Kieron Dyer and Lee wasn’t even given a squad number.
However, when Steve Clarke handed him number 37, suddenly the Rob Lee wonder years were back and the player eventually won back his original shirt number.
Luque has work to do but he returned back last season refreshed and with a point to prove to Roeder and did so by scoring a wonderful goal against Lillestrom.
Sadly, it wasn’t enough to win his place back in the side on a permanent basis and no where near enough to win over Glenn, even though a good strike in the 1-0 win in Palermo of all places showed he still had goals in him.
Luque often told this writer that all he wanted was a run in the team at Newcastle.
But that never arrived even though the team suffered its worse ever injury crisis during a torrid season.
Of course we’ve all had plenty to say about Luque in the past, but we all know he’s proved he can score at the top, top level in Spain.
It looked like PSV might take a chance on Luque but when United failed to attract a single attacker during the January transfer window, there was no way Roeder could afford to lighten an already paper thin squad.
Big Sam takes on a huge challenge in trying to sort Luque’s head out and get him into goalscoring nick once again.
Yet looking at the work of the ex-Bolton boss at the Reebok, if any one can, it’s got to be Big Sam.
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