Newcastle United’s star midfielder Issac Hayden has showered heaps of praise on Miguel Almiron but finds his situation weird at the moment.

The 25-year-old striker, who was signed by Rafael Benitez during the January transfer window, has hugely impressed for the Magpies so far, but he hasn’t opened his account this season.

The Paraguay international is struggling for goals at the moment, and his goal drought is reportedly causing Steve Bruce a big headache.

Hayden reveals that Almiron has been superb in training, and scores every day. He says that Almiron is ‘massively important’ to the side, but for reasons unknown, he is not getting the goals in matches.

Almiron is still searching for his first goal for Newcastle. He had a couple of opportunities to break his duck in the 1-1 draw against Watford on Saturday, but couldn’t take his chances.

He always impresses with his work-rate during the match, and Hayden feels it is only a matter of time before he regains his scoring touch again.

“He’s massively appreciated by everyone else in the dressing room. He’s got bundles of energy. Sometimes, you give him the ball in a difficult area and he can get past three players to break up the pitch,” the midfielder told reporters post-match.

“Him and Atsu are probably the only two players in the team that can do that. He’s massively important to us, especially in terms of getting us up the pitch and making sure that Jo is not isolated. It’s similar to last season, when we had Rondon who was quite isolated. Jo can be quite isolated too, but if you get the willing runners like Almiron, who can get close to him, then it helps him.

“It’s a weird situation because in training he scores every day. In the pre-match routines, he scores with pretty much every shot. It’s one of those things where for whatever reason, it’s just not quite coming off for him in the matches at the minute. The most important thing for him is to keep getting the goalscoring opportunities, keep working hard for the team and at the end of the day, it will come.”