Newcastle United boss Eddie Howe admits his message to Sven Botman is to concentrate solely on his Magpies performances after his recent World Cup snub. The Dutch defender was left out of the Oranje set up by Louis van Gaal despite impressing in the Premier League since his summer arrival.
Botman continues to go from strength to strength on Tyneside, earning special praise from Howe after the 1-0 win over Bournemouth this week. At the age of 22, the centre-back will have plenty of opportunities to impress for his country - but Howe is hoping his new Newcastle undroppable continues to impress at club level.
"You can see by how he played the other day, his response [to being left out] has been good," Howe told reporters on Friday. "There was an element of disappointment on his part.
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"When you're close to it, there's that initial period of dealing with the emotions around it. His career is in a really good place. My message to him would be just concentrate on what you can control and that is performing well for us and the rest will take care of itself.
"There's areas of his game he still needs to work on, naturally. When you're his age and coming to a new league. The Premier League always tests you and he's responded to that.
"The thing that pleases me the most was he was very good aerially against Bournemouth. I'm not sure how much he would have been used to playing against strikers like that."
Botman's Qatar snub is behind him and with Van Gaal retiring from management, Ronald Koeman is poised to take over as Netherlands boss in the New Year. The onus is now on the former Lille man to keep up his impressive domestic form ahead of the next round of international fixtures.
Botman earned praise from Newcastle fans earlier this year by snubbing an U21 call-up to focus on finding his feet in England after struggling to nail down a place in Howe's starting XI. The Dutchman is yet to taste defeat with Newcastle after 16 starts.
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