Callum Wilson: Saint-Maximin is our Grealish – he’s been a huge loss

Callum Wilson was on his way to St James’ Park when he received a text from Alan Shearer. “You’ve made the right choice,” it read, and for three months the goals came, even if the acclaim of a full St James’ Park did not.

Only in supermarkets did Wilson feel what Shearer — who had first sent him a text as he recovered from a cruciate knee ligament injury at Bournemouth — had also spoken of: the desire, the relentlessness.

“In the supermarkets you get the old guys and even the nans coming up to you,” Wilson says. “They’re all just Newcastle United. To be honest, that’s what I wanted to play for. That’s why I came.”

It started well, eight goals in his first