Newcastle United striker Joselu came under fire for a wasteful performance this weekend.
Speaking to The Independent, Newcastle United defender Jamal Lascelles has defended team-mate Joselu after a profligate display against Stoke City on Saturday.
Newcastle moved fourth in the Premier League table with a narrow 2-1 win over Mark Hughes’s side at St James’s Park.
The Spanish striker, a summer signing from Stoke, missed a hatful of glorious chances to score against his former side but each of them went begging.
Lascelles’s header midway through the second half was enough for Newcastle to take all three points and get his new team-mate out of jail in the process.
As a result, Joselu thanked the big centre-back at full time, but the 23-year-old has said that getting team-mates “out of the s**t” is par for the course and believes that Joselu posted a good performance in spite of his wastefulness in front of goal.
He told The Independent: “That’s what team-mates do. If it was down the other end and I’d let a goal in and he went down the other end and scored, I’d have gone up to him and said the same.
“He knows himself he should have scored a couple of goals today, but good team-mates get each other out of the s**t.
“He’s done a great job for us today. He held the ball up well, he kept finding himself in dangerous areas and he’s been a real threat for defences in other games as well, so it’s certainly not one of them when I’m going to have a go at him.”
Joselu has netted once in four Premier League games under compatriot Rafael Benitez since joining the North-East club; not a bad record, but not a great one, considering he was already in the division, and he’ll be aiming to improve on that as the season progresses.
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