I wrote an article upon the signing of Amar Dedic about what he would bring to Newcastle United. In that article I talked at length about his attacking output and the fact that he would have fans swooning at his superiority to Livramento in that area.
Whilst I wholeheartedly believed that to be the case, I certainly didn't quite expect the difference to be as night and day as it has been thus far and, on current viewing, I simply don't see any way that Tino can regain his spot even when fully recovered from injury.
Amar Dedic & his attacking exploits
As mentioned in the title, Dedic has already equalled Livramento's assist tally in three years at Newcastle United, in just THREE GAMES.
Two assists midweek against West Brom followed by yet another exploit against Spurs yesterday and, quite frankly, he could well have had a couple more across his three games had things gone differently.
Newcastle fans had been crying out for some resemblance of a competent attacking threat to compliment the right hand side and it's safe to say that now we've got it, what we were watching previous looks even more like a car crash.
It isn't even that we are purely seeing the actual output have a positive impact either, Dedic's front foot thinking is enabling other players who struggled previously to thrive too.
Dedic's impact on Anthony Elanga
Of course Anthony Elanga's recent upturn in form is not solely down to Amar Dedic, but there is undoubtedly a portion of his improvement that can be attributed to having that support down the right hand side.
Livramento only played 17 Premier League games last season, but in those games offered almost nothing to help out his right flank (whether it be Elanga or Murphy). Kieran Trippier picked up the slack for the rest and, whilst he offered more in that area, we were looking at a Trippier past his best and with tiring legs at 34 years of age.
Elanga strikes me as the sort of player who thrives when given both obvious options to work with, given he maybe doesn't have the most footballing IQ, and with someone at right back who is playing with the singular aim of creating pictures and providing chances for him - which is coincidentally exactly what Amar Dedic does.
Dedic a Jaissle disciple
Despite this current vein of form, there was some uncertainty when we signed Dedic as to whether he'd be up to standard.
But the Bosnian has played under Matthias Jaissle previously, and it's clear to see why, so really we didn't have anything to worry about.
The aggressive, front foot, high intensity play we have seen over the past couple of weeks has been no more mirrored than in the play of the Magpies new right back and he has endeared himself to the Geordie faithful as such.
His gung ho attacking style will likely not let up over the coming weeks, if his stints at other clubs are anything to go by, we will see that early assist tally heavily increased before the season comes to a close next summer.
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