Rob Lee told Football FanCast exclusively that Steve Bruce’s decision to drop Karl Darlow was not necessary and the 30-year old can count himself hard done by.
Darlow has been arguably Newcastle United’s player of the season with claims he was on the cusp of an England call up at the back end of last year.
Martin Dubravka replaced the former Nottingham Forest goalkeeper and was largely at fault for Wolverhampton Wanderers’ goal previously, before making a world-class save in added time.
Did Darlow deserve to be dropped?
Yes, Dubravka is the number one!
No, he’s been in great form
Newcastle are blessed to have two great keepers at the club, but when that position was seemingly the strongest on the pitch Bruce’s decision to replace Darlow may have just been for the sake of making changes.
Bruce has struggled to get his team in form since December and he may have felt changing his keeper would’ve brought about a much needed clean sheet with Dubravka being a more commanding voice behind his defence.
During his exclusive interview with FootballFanCast, Rob Lee shared his thoughts and tried to make sense of why Bruce dropped the man who has kept them out of the bottom three with numerous man of the match performances.
He said: “I personally think it was changed for the sake of change. I don’t think Darlow deserved to be dropped. Is that going to affect anything, him changing Darlow? Not really, that’s not going to affect anything.
“I think Darlow has been our best player by a million miles. I think we’d be in the bottom three if it wasn’t for him.
“I don’t think that’s going to make us any better or any worse really.”
Darlow may look to force a move away from the club for regular first-team football if Bruce would rather have Dubravka as his number one.
The 30-year old has made some outstanding saves this season and has won points for Newcastle almost single-handedly.