Miguel Almirón is Newcastle’s star man in the 22-23 season
The Paraguayan forward might be the brightest light in a constellation of Newcastle stars this season.
A quasar is an active galactic nucleus, a galaxy core so bright that they can reach luminosity levels 1,000 times higher than that of the Milky Way, emitting staggering amounts of radiation across the universe through unbelievably powerful bursts of energy. The hyper-powered core of the quasar hosts a supermassive black hole, which devours everything that reaches the edge, even light itself, and the whole package of the quasar - gas, dust and other matter - routinely outshine entire galaxies for viewing astronomers.
Quite the thing to bottle up, then. But Newcastle have done it.
Miguel Almirón is a quasar in human form: if you scan him with the right machine or even sit pitch side and look very closely, you might be able to see the lightwaves bending all around him, converging in on the force of nature that sits inside, warping around his frame as he outpaces, outmuscles and just about out-everythings every player on the pitch.
Miguel Almirón’s performance in the 2022-23 season
For Eddie Howe’s side this season, Almirón has been more than a shining light. He has scored important goals, racked up assists and sprinkled chances across the pitch like icing sugar for his teammates to lap up.
Against Leeds in the recent 0-0 draw, Almirón was taken off after 84 minutes in a game that not even the biggest die-hard fan will be too keen to watch back. The winger ran and ran at lonely left-back Pascal Struijk for that time and generally caused havoc and terror whenever he got on the ball, despite what seemed like extraterrestrial weather at St James’ Park as the rain lashed horizontally for 90 minutes.
So far this season, Miguel Almirón has scored 9 goals in 19 games, which is just over a goal every other game. He is having over 2 shots per match on average, and scoring 21% of the time. In the Leeds game, 41% of Newcastle’s attacking threat came down the right side where Almirón was playing along with right-back partner, Kieran Trippier, and his average position shows the winger as pushing his opposite number Struijk back as the defender closest to his own goal for Leeds.
Are Newcastle potential Premier League champions?
The club currently sit in third place, having lost only one game all season. Manchester City’s draw against Everton means that Pep Guardiola only has a two point advantage over Newcastle, and they are to play Chelsea in the next round of fixtures. Newcastle are definitely in a title race and, even if they can’t catch runaway Arsenal, the Champions League will be an unexpected treat for the Toon Army, who will need Almirón to continue his extraterrestrial form if they are to achieve that goal.
