Toon ups bid for Gameiro, Abeid is definitely signed and Xisco returns
Posted on May 25th, 2011 | 20 Comments |
The Daily Mail is suggesting that we’re still in hot pursuit of Lorient striker Kevin Gamerio, despite the player indicating a preference for Valencia over Newcastle (has the man no taste?). We have allegedly upped our offer to £10m in an attempt to out-price Valencia.
Allegedly interest in the player from Spurs and the Mackems has cooled.
Mehdi Abeid is, apparently, a definite now, despite nothing yet appearing on the club’s official site. Abeid has been explaining how some of our existing team members persuaded him to join:
“I have had contact dating back some time and I visited the facilities there last week. I even trained with the reserve team.
“The leaders of the club told me about their plans and that they will rely on me for next season. For my part, I intend to give everything to develop in the Premier League.
“I already discussed things with Hatem Ben Arfa and Cheik Tioté and they encouraged me and welcomed my signature.”
That looks like it’s pretty much a done deal for the relatively unknown ex-Lens player.
Meanwhile, Alan Pardew has been talking about his longer-term plans for the club:
“You don’t want to come here and say, ‘Mediocrity, that’s what we want’. We want to excel.
“But you are going to have to invest very well and shrewdly over the next two or three years to get yourself really competitive for that top eight.
“We could finish next year higher than top eight, maybe, but it might be because a little bit of luck falls our way and we steer clear of injuries.
“To have sustained success up there, we need to build over the next two years, for sure.”
Apparently Xisco is back. He was on loan to Deportivo, which is the club we originally bought him from for £5.7m, but Deportivo got relegated and can no longer afford to pay his £50k/week wages (or whatever portion of it they were paying). Allegedly Alan Pardew has vowed to work with the player this summer and see if he can extract any value out of him for our £5.7m expenditure. Xisco scored 2 goals in 9 appearances for Deportivo.
While I was writing this I managed to spill a cup of tea over my router, yet despite a somewhat foul smell and a bit of fizzing, it started up fine again once I’d dried it out. This must be my lucky day, so I’ll be buying a lottery ticket.
NUFCBlog Author: Hugh de Payen
I'm a baby-boomer of the punk rock persuasion, currently exiled in Somerset for crimes committed in a previous life where locals keep trying to poison me with something called 'scrumpy'. Hates sprouts, coat-hangers, Cilla Black, ornaments, Steven Seagull movies and 50 Cent (he's not worth 10).
Hugh de Payen has written 634 articles on this blog.
so Newcastle lose out on Juan Albin who is from Uruguay, don’t think we were linked with him any time soon first disappointment to pards plans?? don’t think so as we are linked with so many its like being a kid in a candy store with the fat man taking all the candies :P