The Newcastle United Class of 2022/23 – Chris Wood

Here at The Mag we have asked 20 of our regular / irregular contributors to pay tribute to the 20 Newcastle United players who started two or more Premier League matches this past 2022/23 season.

To an extent guided by their preference, each writer has been allocated one player each.

This series of articles runs from Thursday 1 June to Tuesday 20 June with one player covered each day, each article appearing at noon.

This started with the player who had the lowest NUFC squad number (Kieran Trippier) and will go right through to the highest (Bruno Guimaraes).

Today’s Newcastle United player from the class of 2022/23 is Chris Wood, our thanks to Jinky Jim for providing this overview:

Well, it is fair to say it is a bit harder to write a piece about Chris Wood than Bruno or Nick Pope, but nevertheless, he played for our team last season, so here goes…

Lets start with the facts.

He played six games and came off the bench in 16 others

He scored three goals.

A fine goal at Southampton and a spot kick at Leicester were important but I’d argue that his winner at Tranmere in that cup tie was the most significant thing he did in a black and white shirt.

We were being bullied out of the cup that night but once we were ahead, that was us on the road to Wembley.

Granted, it may not be the legacy of Quinn or Kelly, but it is a bit better than Ki Sung-yueng.

If you can’t remember who I mean, he made 23 Newcastle United appearances and never scored between 2018-2020

When Chris Wood arrived it was obvious that his signing wasn’t going to please the Fifa22 generation. A noisy minority expecting Neymar to turn up at the St James’ gates.

However, Eddie Howe knew that player attitude was going to play a huge part in that first six months in order to avoid relegation and this lad’s attitude was first class (Newcastle United picked up 29 points in Wood’s 15 PL starts in the second half of the 2021/22 season).

Chris Wood was a team player who may not have been the greatest ever seen at Newcastle, but just be grateful, that he wasn’t Dele Ali or Jessie Lingard. That thought is too horrible to contemplate.

Talent is important but if you are a bone idle charlatan, it counts for nothing.

I think we would all agree that he is nowhere near good enough for Newcastle United circa Saudi ownership, but ironically, if Ashley had stuck around and got us relegated (yet again…), Chris would have been just what we needed for our 46 game season against the likes of Huddersfield and Cardiff.

I for one wish him well for the remainder of his career.