Pardew rubbishes transfer links.
Posted on December 22nd, 2010 | 183 Comments |
Alan Pardew has today reiterated that no players are for sale in January, and that includes the likes of Joey Barton and Andy Carroll – both of whom have been targets for speculation in the last few days.
This will no doubt come as a blow to the press who will now have to suffer the fate of stirring up some new rumours, but the mantra of the club should, and will, remain as it was under Hughton the Great. The lines back then were to not believe everything you read in the papers, which is common sense to some, but that mantra looks set to be continuing under Pardew.
Joey Barton is happy at Newcastle, or at least he claims to be, and that is part of the reason why Pardew is confident that he will be losing no players in January.
“Of course, you can never say 100% that a player definitely, definitely isn’t going anywhere,” Pardew told The Chronicle. “Sometimes it is 50% down to the player, whether they want to stay.”
“And part of the reason that I’m confident is that I’ve had conversations with all of the players now and not one wants to leave.”
I’m not really surprised by that as I believe that we will see a fairly quiet January. We may get one or two in and one or two may leave, but they won’t be our key players, that is for sure. In fact I predict a quiet January transfer window throughout the league to be honest as the 25-man squad rules mean that players will likely have to be moved on first if they are to be replacedThen again, we all know how good my predictions are!
Anyway, I digress. Getting back to the rumours, Pardew has had his say on them all.
“I want Joey to stay, it’s as simple as that as far as I’m concerned,” he said.
“There’s obviously going to be clubs interested in him because he’s done so well. But from the DVDs I’ve watched of Newcastle games, you can see how important he is to us. I want him to stay.”
“And that goes for all the other players, like Andy, who have been linked with other clubs as well. They are not going. We want them to stay here, and that is something that we’re working towards with players who are vulnerable with their contract situations.”
The interesting part of that little statement to me is the part about contracts. Players who are in vulnerable contract positions, in my view, would be players like Barton and Jose Enrique and other key, first-team players that are perhaps in the last 18 months or so of their respective contracts. Could this mean that new contracts could be in the offing for them?
Time will tell on that, but I don’t expect any contracts for our ‘high earners’ to be renewed until our Premier League status is assured for next season.
So there we go. Basically there will be no players leaving Newcastle, unless they want to. That is how I read it anyway, but feel free to put your own spin on it.
Meanwhile, I’m off to play (work) in the snow!
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
We’ll see.
If Ashley wants to take the cash he will.