“He looks beautiful.” This is not the opening gambit we anticipated, which just goes to show that, where Lewis Miley is concerned, it is still judicious to expect the unexpected. It is a verdict delivered from the heart of Newcastle United ’s training ground as the 18-year-old midfielder, the breakout star who nobody saw coming, edges closer to the first team.
Second time around, everybody is excited all over again. Advertisement “Some boy,” was how a member of Newcastle’s coaching staff referred to Miley when he caught the eye during a pre-season tour to the United States last year, before becoming a mainstay of coach Eddie Howe’s side — a rare beneficiary of the team’s awful spate of injuries. By the end of the season, after setting all sorts of records, he had grasped his opportunity, making 17 appearances in the Premier League .
Inside the club, there was genuine relief he had been tied down to a long-term contract. Nobody is calling Miley a boy any more. After an absence of seven months, first with the back injury he suffered while on international duty with England Under-20s and then due to a broken metatarsal (the long bones in the middle of your foot), he has both reached the age of legal adulthood and bulked up.
If he still has the face of a kid, he now has the physique of a man, which is where the “beautiful” comment comes in. Miley has grown up and grown outwards, working with typical diligence during his lay-off. Taking no chances on his matu.