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Or, Ginola wasn’t the best French winger Newcastle United has had.

Ginola, Robert, Ben Arfa and Saint-Maximin in full fl

This season we’ve witnessed the very destructive best of one of our mercurial French wingers with the performance against Manchester City and the goal against Wolves. Few are able to cause that much chaos in such a well-drilled team.

We do love our mercurial French wingers don’t we?

There’s something about the way they play the game. It’s all about the artistry, the flair, and that wonderful Gallic arrogance. It’s what they do to us.

It’s in the shuffling forward on your seat.

Bracing your legs to stand.

The whisper, then shout of “go on!”

The chaos.

The goals.

The assists.

The, well we didn’t really expect him to track back but once would be nice.

We’ve definitely had our fair share of them at Newcastle and they usually become an icon of that moment, that era for the club. This leads to the recurring debate of who was better. I’m going to settle it once and for all (I’m not).

Of course, this is an incredibly difficult question to answer, with differing systems, approaches, teammates and more, so take this all with a pinch of salt or a fine glass of French wine.

The Contenders

Introducing, first, our contenders:

1. David Ginola. The poster boy of Keegan’s entertainers, scorer of magnificent goals, tormentor of right backs and wearer of incredible hair.
2. Laurent Robert. Possessing what seemed like the hardest shot in the whole of football, scorer of incredible goals, wearer of grey pants. Brilliant in the Robson era.
3. Hatem Ben Arfa. The dropper of the Hatem bomb. A technical wizard who could run through entire teams without changing direction. Twice. The true wearer of the mercurial label. The perfect summary of Pardew’s reign.
4. Allan Saint-Maximin. The fast-footed, social media star and one of the best dribblers in world football. Only bright spark of Bruce’s reign, incredibly important to Howe.

The Comparisons

I’m going to do a number of comparisons of these players, some will be based on facts, some on my opinions. I will rank them 1–4 with some explanations.

First. A completely unobjective, made up in my head, test.

The Schoolyard test

Were/are kids wanting to be these players when they’re playing football in the park, in the schoolyard, with a scuffed-up ball? There will be a massive age-related bias to this one and I’ve not done any school-based research…

1. David Ginola. I spent a long time, with my mate Woody, trying to recreate Ginola’s goal against Ferencvaros in the schoolyard, therefore Ginola wins.
2. Allan Saint-Maximin. His electric dribbling should be the perfect inspiration to all those headband-wearing schoolyard legends.
3. Laurent Robert. Who wouldn’t want to be the scorer of ridiculously hard-hit goals? Probably inspired more people to wildly miss by aiming to kick the ball as hard as possible.
4. Hatem Ben Arfa. Sorry Hatem, I think that you are fourth because of being a little too mercurial.

Now we’ve done that very, very unscientific test onto something a little more factual.

The cost test

How much did they cost, in today’s money according to The Transfer Index by Totally Money.

1. Hatem Ben Arfa — £5.4m, in today’s money £14.8m
2. Allan Saint-Maximin — £16.2m, in today’s money £16.2m
3. Ginola — £2.5m, in today’s money £24.4m
4. Laurent Robert — £12.8m, in today’s money £29.1m

The goals and assists test

This one is simple, how many goals and assists did each of these wonderful, gallic mavericks get?, Of course we’ll make this into a per 90 stat to compare. The statistics are from FBREF.

David Ginola
Games — 65
Minutes — 5195
Goals — 7
Assists — 12
Goals & Assists per 90–0.35

Laurent Robert
Games — 162
Minutes — 12053
Goals — 27
Assists — 32
Goals & Assists per 90–0.47

Hatem Ben Arfa
Games — 79
Minutes — 4626
Goals — 13
Assists — 11
Goals & Assists per 90–0.47

Allan Saint-Maximin
Games — 95
Minutes — 6818
Goals — 13
Assists — 16
Goals & Assists per 90–0.37

This means that the ranking for Goals & Assists is:

1. Laurent Robert. 0.47 G+A per 90
2. Hatem Ben Arfa. 0.47 G+A per 90
3. Allan Saint-Maximin. 0.37 G+A per 90
4. David Ginola. 0.35 G+A per 90

Laurent Robert wins this, purely down to playing nearly 3 times the minutes of Hatem Ben Arfa.

The value for money test

I made up a value for money coefficient. It’s essentially the ratio between output and cost, using the Transfer Index data in the point above. Here are the results:

1. Hatem Ben Arfa, 3.18
2. Allan Saint-Maximin, 2.22
3. Laurent Robert, 1,62
4. David Ginola, 1.43

The gamble on Ben Arfa was a good one in terms of pure value, if you discount the issues faced in managing him through his time at Newcastle.

The best goal test

Another mighty fine subjective test from my mind, who scored the best goal?

These are the goals, in order of my favourite.

1. David Ginola — Ferencvaros — by far his best goal for Newcastle, the control, chipping the defender only to volley into the top corner. Wonderful.
2. Laurent Robert — Fulham. It could’ve been any one of a number of freekicks or that volley against Spurs but no. That overhead scorpion kick. There’s just no way he should’ve scored that.
3. Hatem Ben Arfa — Blackburn. Another that scored some cracking goals. You’ll most often see his long-distance dribble against Bolton. The goal against Blackburn in the FA Cup, however, was better.
4. Allan Saint-Maximin — Oxford — Yes, the helicopter goal in the FA Cup. We needed a moment of magic to break down a gritty Oxford side. ASM provided.

The who would be best in the current team test

Yes, this is another horribly subjective test. Purely thinking about them as a player, who would I have in the current team out of those players and why?

1. Laurent Robert. To have a player on the right wing who possesses pace like Robert, coupled with his ability to both score and provide. In a modern system, I think he’d have ended up even better. We’re crying out for output from our wingers, he’d provide.
2. Allan Saint-Maximin. We’ve just watched him at his destructive best. He often struggles for output but he does have in the ability to move the entire team forward by taking on and beating players, and being able to drive defences back with the threat of his pace to exploit any space in behind.
3. Hatem Ben Arfa. With a really strong goal and assist ratio coupled with pace and trickery on the ball, Ben Arfa would fit into the modern team. Question marks would be around his consistency and work-rate though.
4. David Ginola. In a game plan that requires pace from our wide forwards to take advantage of the space behind fullbacks that push on. While being no slouch, Ginola wasn’t the fastest, nor did he have the greatest output so, despite holding legendary status, I don’t think he makes it in.

Final results

Assigning 4 points to first place in a test running down to 1 point for last gives us the following results:

1. Robert — 16 Points
2. Ben Arfa — 16 Points
3. Saint-Maximin — 15 Points
4. Ginola — 13 points

There we have it, it’s a tie between Robert and Ben Arfa. I’m going to make a judge’s decision to say that Robert wins, purely for the consistency.

Saint-Maximin is very close behind despite having Bruce as a manager.

Ginola, somewhat surprisingly lagged behind. I think I must have had black-and-white tinted glasses thinking back to the entertainer’s era because I thought he’d score much higher.

Without a doubt then, this proves conclusively* that Laurent Robert was the best of our French wingers.

*OK, maybe not conclusively.