Newcastle bid revealed as Ben Arfa saga rolls on.
Posted on August 3rd, 2010 | 77 Comments |
The French publication La Mercato is reporting that Newcastle have had a bid turned down for the player who was once dubbed as the future of French football, but talks will continue in the hope of reaching a deal.
It sounds like the player wants to come to Newcastle despite interest from Italian clubs AC Milan, Genoa and Parma and German outfit Hoffenheim. Deals including those four clubs are favoured by Marseille, but it is the player who is holding things up by waiting for Newcastle to make another move as he would prefer to come to Tyneside instead.
Ben Arfa’s apparent determination to move to Newcastle has forced Marseille into contacting The Magpies again to make a counter-offer that is presumably somewhere between our original offer and what Marseille value the player at as they need the cash to enable them to chase their own transfer targets, which sounds hopeful from our perspective.
A move to Newcastle doesn’t appear to sit too well with Ben Arfa’s advisors though as they seem to think that a move to the Premier League would not be in the best interest of the player. Or perhaps it’s not in the interest of the advisors wallet? Maybe that is just me being cynical?
Anyway, if you wish to read the original article you can do so here, but as a warning you will either need to be able to understand French or feed it into a translation programme such as Google Translate, although other good translators are available.
So it would appear that there is something in this rumour after all then, and it would also appear that the player wants to come here, which would be great if it actually came off. The French press isn’t like ours, it is regulated more tightly and as a consequence they can be trusted more, just slightly more.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see on this one!
4 top draw blogs the day – you’re just an automaton :)