In less than 10 Premier League games, Malick Thiaw is already collecting a body of work to back up the claim that he is the division’s best centre-back.
Things come at you fast in the fastest league in the world but the plaudits feel thoroughly deserved.
Since a seamless half-time introduction in the thick of a Champions League battle with Barcelona, he has not put a foot wrong in black and white but on Saturday night came his most eye-catching achievement: pocketing the most prolific forward on the planet.
Aura merchant Erling Haaland turned up at St James’ Park averaging an astonishing goal every 50 minutes over his last four matches for club and country. He has been pretty much unplayable all season.
Just a goal away from joining the Premier League’s 100 club, he would have raced to that mark faster than even Alan Shearer managed if he had scored at the weekend. And given how open and chaotic the game was – a deliberate decision by Eddie Howe to try and drag Manchester City into a slug fest – you would have put your mortgage on him breaking that record.
But on Saturday he came up against a defender making a mockery of the price tag Newcastle United paid for him in the summer. £30m? Thiaw already looks worth double that and then some.
Given how critical this result was for Howe and a Newcastle side who needed to respond to anaemic performances before the international break, it was understandable that attention afterwards was elsewhere. But Thiaw’s astonishingly accomplished tackle on Haaland early in the second half should not hover under the radar.
It was so wonderfully timed – Haaland denied as he attempted that trademark shoulder drop and feint before getting his shot off – that it prevented an almost certain City goal. It was also typical of a performance that showcased just how good Thiaw is becoming when pitched against the league’s best strikers in one-on-one duels.
Internally the Germany international has surprised even Newcastle’s coaching staff at the speed of his adaption to a new league. The move for him in the summer was no kneejerk call – they had scouted him for more than two years – but there is a recognition that even astute analysis can go wrong sometimes. Take Liverpool’s brains trust moving heaven and earth to prise Alexander Isak to Anfield, only for him to stand out like a sore thumb in a team not set up to play to his strengths.
There was never any worry of that with Thiaw. He ticked so many of Howe’s boxes – speed, strength, technical ability and tactically sharp – that you wonder why Newcastle waited so long to press the button on the signing.
What has been equally impressive is his big game mentality. Asked to match up with Haaland, he didn’t miss a beat. Insiders speak of him being a model professional and “so level all the time” while one experienced scout The i Paper spoke to over the weekend messaged to say Thiaw is destined to be a regular at an elite Champions League club. That is a title that Newcastle, for all their early season inconsistency, hope will apply to them in the not-too-distant future.
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At a time when there is much debate about Newcastle’s transfer policy, he also represents a “third way” between Howe’s desire for plug-in-and-play signings and PIF’s requirement for the Magpies to sign younger “rough diamonds” with the potential to appreciate in value and ability.
As sporting director Ross Wilson investigates ways for Newcastle to prosper in the era of the new squad cost ratio (SCR) regulations, Thiaw’s wage and age profile feels like a “gold standard” to aspire to.
On the pitch, Saturday’s display was the same. No one sensible was ever questioning Howe but his first win over Pep Guardiola was a riposte to those on the fringes that had. Newcastle, you feel, are too good to tread water in the Premier League for too long.
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