Leo Shahar loan continues to disappoint leaving Newcastle United with decision to make

Newcastle United had a restructure of their loans department this summer with a view to creating a more fruitful pathway to senior football for young players.

While that has seen a positive return for some, namely the likes of Rory Finneran who is in fine form playing for Notts County and even Alex Murphy at Kaiserslautern, that hasn’t been the case for all of the Magpies’ young talent.

Leo Shahar was sent out on loan to Arouca in Portugal with high hopes for his development, but has been left an outcast on foreign land and is yet to play a single minute in Liga Portugal.

It has been a mightily disappointing return for a player who was on the outskirts of the first team picture on Tyneside just last season, and is quickly developing into a situation requiring his parent club to make a decision on his immediate future sooner rather than later.

To be quite frank, the current situation for Shahar shouldn’t actually come as too much of a surprise when you take a closer look at the Arouca squad.

Shahar’s direct competition for the right-back position is club captain Esgaio who has literally played every single minute of every game so far this season. Unless he gets injured, Shahar has no chance of making an impression.

In reality, Newcastle United themselves should have seen this coming too and, while the club of course may have been promised certain things by Arouca in terms of his minutes that haven’t materialised, one look at their current squad and circumstances would have been more than enough to think twice.

Instead, the Magpies have left Leo Shahar in an impossible situation and one that, if the club are not careful, could start to have a long term impact on not only his development, but also his confidence.

There are Newcastle youngsters littered throughout English and world football right now who are making a name for themselves in senior football while out on loan, Leo Shahar isn’t one of them despite being one of the brightest talents on the Magpies’ books.

It would be fine if he was fighting tooth and nail to get minutes and receiving some chances, like Sean Neave at Wolves for example, but Shahar literally isn’t getting a sniff of senior football down to a technicality that he can seemingly do nothing about.

That simply can’t continue for the rest of this season or Newcastle risk allowing a full year of Shahar’s development to slip through their fingers. That would be a disaster, especially during a period where young players are so important to the future of the project and play such a big part in the sustainability of the football club’s current model.

With that being said, the Magpies have just one option and, with the January transfer window fast approaching, now feels like the perfect time to pull the trigger, accept this loan didn’t quite work out, and ultimately find Shahar somewhere he can thrive for the remainder of the season.