10 Players Who Stole A Living From Newcastle United

4. Fabrice Pancrate

When you think about players who conned their way into Newcastle fans' affections, the ones who showed a very brief flash of brilliance before reverting to being garbage will always come to mind: like Clarence Acuna's performance with Jamie McClen against Arsenal, Daniel Cordone's incredible volleyed cross against Fulham or Fabrice Pancrate's sublime turn and goal against Watford. Sadly, that was about as much as Pancrate ever did at Newcastle in the 16 league games that he featured in during the Championship season, and it became painfully obvious that alongside Fitz Hall and Mike Williamson, he was never going to be good enough for the Premier League. Well, two out of three isn't that bad. The signing of Wayne Routledge all but spelled the end of Pancrate's association with Newcastle, and he was released as Newcastle made their way back to the Premier League under Chris Hughton. That decision was a far better one than the boss had made in signing him in the first place, given the winger's lack of real ability - but you can sort of see why it happened: he'd played almost 100 league games for Paris St-Germain, scoring 10 goals, and even though this was before they got embarrassingly rich, it was never really suggested that he had conned a living out of the French giants. The same could not be said after that one season at Newcastle.