Nick Woltemade: Newcastle know their nines
Alexander Isak left Newcastle in the summer. Since then, we’ve barely heard a pip of how Eddie Howe has struggled to replace arguably the most talented and revered player to put on the black and white since… well, Alan Shearer probably. The reason for that? A 6ft 5 lanky German striker named Nick who’s sauntered into the world’s hardest league and made it his playground.
First, it was £70 million on the Isak in the 2022/23 season. The Swedish striker had only scored 6 goals in La Liga the season before at Real Sociedad. Fans across the country were scratching their heads and laughing at Newcastle for forking out such a ludicrous sum on a striker who’d failed at Borussia Dortmund and barely established himself as a top player in Spain. But as soon as Isak stepped foot in England, these same fans were forced to shut up, sit back and watch greatness unfold.
His replacement? Another relatively unproven striker with only one real season of senior football under his belt. Sure, he looked alright during the 2024/25 campaign, but the guy only scored 12 in the league for VFB Stuttgart and all of a sudden Newcastle were lining him up to succeed one of the best strikers in the world at almost an identical price point to which they originally bought their Swede.
The football world once again reacted to the news with confusion and laughter. ‘Bundesliga tax.’ ‘Panic buy.’ ‘Stuttgart have pulled their pants down’. Were all words and phrases iterated by the majority of Premier League followers days after the transfer. And it appears we didn’t learn our lesson. Because Woltemade, like Isak, is utterly brilliant. And it has taken only a handful of games for us to all come to terms with that.
The beauty of the 23 year old is that he is truly a 1 of 1 talent. When cascading through all the players in this magnificent sport who have come and gone, I struggle to think of one who is similar to Woltemade in terms of the blend of size, skill and intelligence he possesses. If I squint my eyes and tilt my head slightly, I can see some resemblance to Peter Crouch, but even that is me pushing the boat out.
Everyone has known that Woltemade isn’t your typical big striker ever since he began making waves for Stuttgart last campaign. His adoring fans gave him the nickname of ‘Woltemessi’ which gives you some idea of his unique playstyle. But what was lesser known was the fact that this was how good he already was. This is hardly a ‘project player’ bursting onto the scene that Newcastle were going to invest time and patience into, in hopes that he blossoms into something special. This is already a particularly special player who can spearhead this club for years to some.
The stature of a Giraffe with the gracefulness of a Gazelle, Newcastle’s new revelation is a walking contradiction. It’s not the 5 goals in 10 games so far that excites me. It’s how easy he’s made it all look. Woltemade seems to be operating on a level above most of his Newcastle teammates. His performances thus far have featured elite-levels of holdup play, keeping some of the league’s most physical centre-backs at bay. They’ve featured intelligent dummies and one-touch flicks for his teammates to gobble up whilst he’s also able to get on the end of chances and finish confidently in the box.
His footballing-brain is massive and it’s evident in almost everything he does on the pitch. The fact Woltemade is also one of the tallest players in the league with the technical ability to wriggle out of tight spaces as if he were a shrewd Spanish number 10, means that he’s a game-breaker who will soon be deciding the outcome of matches on his own. Just like his predecessor.
The Isak-Woltemade pipeline is already looking like a stroke of genius from the Newcastle recruiting team. And when you factor in the displays of Callum Wilson at the beginning of Howe’s tenure and the slow but sure trajectory of William Osula that we’re currently witnessing, it’s abundantly clear that Newcastle know what their doing when it comes to signing strikers.
A position that so many clubs find hard to get right, Steve Nickson, Eddie Howe and former Sporting Directors Paul Mitchell and Dan Ashworth, have been bang on the money pretty much every time. Their ability to identify these forwards who all have the physicality to do well in England but also to see those extra little bits to their game which make them special, is evidence of their wonderfully meticulous and well thought out approach to the game that has spearheaded Newcastle’s return to the top of English football.
