I’m slapping in Colo in here. He was only liked because of his hair. Im also going to add Mitro to this aswell.
His hair was definitely not a thing of admiration, only grow your hair if it's gonna look good, not a curly afro abomination like that.
Reason was he was clearly trying bloody hard to make it work. It may have lead to a few slightly reckless 2 footed challenges but at least he was trying to close to oppo down!
HBA - not in terms of ability but he just produced very little for us and decided to get fat. I think for the talent he wasted, he was the most overrated player. He could have been anything he wanted if he wasn't such a fat lazy child. Was laden with ability but just loved fried chicken too much and had a chip on his shoulder. For a player the fans rated but I couldn't see it ability wise, I'd go for Ketsbaia. The fans loved his effort and loved him. Technically he was actually ok, but there was nowt upstairs and he was a ****ing headless chicken who had little understanding of what was actually happening on the pitch. Used to do my head in to watch him run all the way to the oppo box, back to our box, then back up the pitch and lose it. I've never seen Shearer look so frustrated
Not sure exactly how rated he was, but how Shola Ameobi played so many games is beyond me. Guy scored about 3 goals in his professional career as a striker
Shola always slayed the Mackems and got goals when we needed him. He was never overrated cos no one rated him lol, he'll always be a cult legend here.
He was generally seen as being garbage at the time. In fairness to him he was often not played as an out-and-out striker and he actually scored 15 goals in 51 European games (including away to Barcelona and away to Bayer Leverkusen in the later stages of the Champions League). That's about the same as your man Firmino... Who i also think is similarly limited. Shola will always garner affection from Newcastle fans as he scored plenty of goals against Sunderland (always played better in derbies) and, I think, has scored more goals in Europe than their entire club has.