🦁 Premier League Player of the Week: He's Brazilian | OneFootball

This week’s Player of the Week takes into account last week’s midweek fixtures as well as the weekend. And we have plumped for …

Joelinton (Newcastle United)

To the tune of the Oasis hit She’s Electric, all together now:

“He’s Brazilian, he only cost 40 million. And we think he’s f*cking brilliant. He’s Joel-in-ton.”

Now imagine Newcastle fans singing that and not being laughed at back when Steve Bruce was still in charge.

Joelinton has gone from Premier League punchline to one of the most versatile and reliable players in a side fighting to finish in the top four.

The Brazilian was transformed into an all-action midfielder under Eddie Howe last season but has mixed that role with duties on the wing more often this term and it is all coming together very nicely indeed. No more nicely than it has in the past week.

A superbly timed run and calm finish, rounding Lukas Fabianski to tap in, put Newcastle two goals up at West Ham last week before the Brazilian put the cherry on the cake of the 5-1 win as he was again released in behind late on and found the far corner with his weaker left foot.

Joelinton started on the left again a few days later, at Brentford, but it wasn’t so plain sailing for the Toon.

An Ivan Toney penalty sent Brentford in ahead at half-time and Joelinton was moved into midfield as Newcastle sought to become the first team to ever come from behind to win a Premier League game against the Bees.

Joelinton took that challenge on himself. A quiet first half — only two Newcastle outfielders had fewer touches before the break — was followed by a now trademark second in midfield alongside countryman Bruno Guimarães.

Within minutes, Joelinton drifted wide to receive the ball and sat Ben Mee down with a classy feint before calmly looking to pick a pass across the face of goal. David Raya read the effort but diverted it into his own goal to level things up.

In the entire second half, only two players (one from each side) had more touches than Joelinton, who won the most tackles of any player on the pitch (four in that half alone) and didn’t lose possession himself once.

Effective out wide as an outlet. Effective in the middle as someone who can help a team control a game. And a huge reason Newcastle took six points from a huge week to strengthen their grip on a top four spot.

No wonder Newcastle fans are now singing Joelinton’s name week in, week out.