Happy Birthday Shola

Newcastle's most prolific substitute, Shola Ameobi, celebrated his 31st birthday on Friday having been a first team regular now for over 12 years since first squaring up to Dennis Wise at St. James' Park in September 2000.

Shola appeared as a 70th minute substitute that day in a goalless draw with Chelsea and last Sunday made his 144th substitute appearance against Manchester United.

That eclipses our other most frequent appearers from the bench by some distance with Lomana LuaLua (67), Lee Clark (64) and Temuri Ketsbaia (51) trailing in his wake.

He is now just four shy of 200 starts for the club, meaning he has clocked up 340 first team appearances and is fast approaching Andy Aitken, Frank Brennan and Bob Moncur but is still way behind Jimmy Lawrence, Frank Hudspeth, Shay Given and the other 400+ players.

His 73 goals are modest in comparison and he'll certainly never threaten his former playing partner Alan Shearer's club record of 206.

Unlike the sheet metal worker's son though, he's yet to miss a penalty kick in a competitive match for United, racking up 10 successful conversions - all at SJP.

We can also reveal that he has been subbed no fewer than 91 times (twice having already come on as a sub!) so he has only played 105 full first team games (30.9% of his total appearances).

That still amounts to a frightening total of 18,609* minutes in league and cup games for United, or put another way, an average of 54 minutes, 44 seconds per game.

That dips down to an average 52 minutes, 13 seconds for league appearances and peaks at 73 minutes for Intertoto fixtures.

Quite when the Shola story will end is anyone's guess - his SJP career appeared to be over in March 2008 when he was loaned to Stoke City, while a move to Ipswich Town in August that year broke down due to a groin injury after the Tractor Boys agreed a transfer fee.

But as long as he keeps appearing off the bench to add to his seven goals against the mackems, the boy from Fenham/Zaria is quite welcome to continue....

* Note for pedants - added time not included. Therefore a sub appearance in the 89th minute or later is recorded as a one minute appearance and full appearances are recorded as either 90 or 120 minutes.

 

Shola is a sexy beast

 

rep!

 

No way... We'll be wheeling Ol' Shola out for Derby day until he's stop making random movements due to the post-mortem build-up of noxious gases...

And the Mackems will still be doubling up on him

 

A bit late but Happy Birthday Shola