Newcastle’s player of the season’ is heart of the team

As Newcastle’s players basked in the adulation from St James’ Park, one figure towered above them. He always does, but Dan Burn extended further into the Tyneside skyline during the lap of honour as he punched the air in seeming disbelief.

- RICHARD JOLLY

The man who has admitted he thought his chances of playing for his boyhood club were gone when a takeover led them to be deemed the world’s richest club will instead play in a second final for them. The last Geordies to win a major English trophy for Newcastle included the great Jackie Milburn. The next ones could include Burn.

He has always given a human face to Newcastle’s revival, the likeable local with the ungainly frame and the improbable career path. Explosively brilliant as Alexander Isak is, Burn was described after the first leg of the Carabao Cup semi-final win over Arsenal by Anthony Gordon as Newcastle’s player of the season. Thomas Tuchel probably won’t call, but Burn has arguably been the best English centre-back in the Premier League this year. His reward may yet come in the form of silverware.

Many far beyond his native Blyth would welcome that. For all the talk of sportswashing that greeted the buyout from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, perhaps this is sportsburning: Newcastle’s oversized underdog, a scorer in last season’s rout of Paris Saint-Germain, helps generate a feelgood factor.

It also illustrates a way in which the Newcastle project has turned out rather differently than how many anticipated. Perhaps that is a sign that PSR is working, that Newcastle are constrained, unable to access their owners’ millions. Or that Saudi attention has been diverted elsewhere: Jhon Duran was bought at vast expense in January, Kaoru Mitoma the subject of huge bids, but not from Newcastle.