Taarabt happy to join Newcastle as stepping stone to “very big” club.
Posted on June 19th, 2011 | 21 Comments |
The player is intent on a move from the West London club as he feels they will be relegated after their first year if they don’t invest heavily in new players, and he is also unhappy at the club not offering him an improved contract with promotion told The Mail on Sunday:
“People say Newcastle will be good for me, that the fans love players like me. It is fantastic to play in front of 50,000 supporters every week.”
Then, in an obvious attempt to ingratiate himself with Newcastle United supporters, he added:
“I do not need one of the very big clubs at this stage of my career.”
The player had previously stated that his ambition was to leave QPR for one of the very big clubs such as Chelsea or Arsenal, but now seems to be prepared to put these plans on hold, possibly due to lack of interest from the big guns. Now it seems that he sees Newcastle United as an ideal club to act as a ‘stepping stone’ on the way to him achieving his ultimate ambition. However, with prices like £10 million being bandied around for Taarabt, which would include up to 40% going to previous club, Tottenham, it is still highly doubtful that Newcastle United would be interested in a player who is relatively unproven at the highest level for that kind of sum.
Meanwhile, things are still unclear on what will be happening with Wayne Routledge and his potentially permanent move in the opposite direction. Routledge, already on loan at Queen’s Park Rangers after being told he was surplus to requirements by current Newcastle United manager, Alan Pardew, is still currently in football limbo.
If I was Alan Pardew, I’d be issuing a statement along the lines of “We can’t afford a truly big player at the moment but we’ll make do with Adel Taarabt until we can.”