The left-back situation – Enrique latest, Bridge rumours and other options

Posted on July 17th, 2011 | 25 Comments |

Jose Enrique now virtually certain to leave Newcastle United
Exit door looms
With Enrique looking more and more destined to leave Newcastle United as each day passes and with Neil Taylor signing a new deal at Swansea, the left-back situation is now a priority for the club.

Newcastle are now pretty much resigned to the fact that they’ll have to hunt for a new left-back before the summer’s out. It seems fairly odds-on now that Jose Enrique will leave and last week Alan Pardew said:

“The noises coming out of Jose’s camp are that he wants to get a new club playing Champions League football.

“We cannot offer him that at the moment, so that seems to be his focus. Hopefully that will change. It is a moving feast. We have got to be ready because if he goes, it is going to leave a big hole in the team and we need to fill it quickly. But he does travel to the United States with us.

“It is not ideal for us, as you can imagine. It is difficult. We have offered him a massive contract for this football club and he does not seem to want to sign it, so it is a very difficult position.

“We have had no concrete offers, but we are going to try and have contingency plans in place so that if we do lose X, then Y comes in.

“We are going to have to give ourselves some sort of chance, so that the deadline-day struggle we had after selling Andy Carroll does not happen again. We not want to be in the same position as last time.“

As far as I can gather, Enrique has not actually put in a formal transfer request himself yet – which I believe would prevent him from claiming a signing-on fee – but he just seems to be biding his time until a suitor makes some sort of formal request.

If, as Pardew says, the club have ‘had no concrete offers’ then Liverpool have not made any sort of formal move for the player yet despite all the rumours surrounding their alleged interest. Not that it should matter if Enrique wants Champions League football as he says. Liverpool aren’t in the Champions League – end of.

The danger may lie in Pardew’s algebraic reference that ‘if we lose X, then Y comes in’ as this seems to suggest that Ashley may be unwilling to fund and incoming transfer for Y until he’s got the money from the outgoing transfer of X, so I think we really need to get Enrique moved on as a priority.

This is particularly pertinent as Toon target Neil Taylor – who I think was planned as the first backup for a more experienced left-back anyway – is now not an option after he signed a new deal to stay at Swansea.

The People has us once again ‘linked’ with Wayne Bridge today where a ‘St James’ Park source’ allegedly said:

“We would definitely be interested in Bridge. He would be a valuable addition to our squad, whether or not we sell Jose. But he would have to show us he still wants to play football and take a drop in his wages.”

But I think that’s pure invention by the newspaper. He’s 30 and on high wages, which is the complete opposite to the ‘profile’ of the sort of players Newcastle seem to be interested in, and just how much of a drop from his alleged £90k/week would the player have to make before Ashley would consider signing him?

Aly Cissokho – the 23 year-old Lyon-based French-Senegalese left-back – would seem to fit the profile for a Toon left-back a bit better. Apparently he is supposed to be on Arsenal’s radar along with our own Jose Enrique although recent reports suggest he might be on his way to Liverpool in a €10m deal.

Chelsea’s Patrick van Aanholt looks like he might need to settle at a club where he can get regular first-team football and he seemed to have a reasonable run with us when we loaned him in January 2010. But is he up to replacing Enrique as the number one choice? With just 41 games, mainly for Championship clubs, to his name it seems unlikely.

What about a couple of the left-backs Benfica is allegedly after? 24 year-old Argentinian Cristian Ansaldi can play at either left-back or right-back. He currently plays for Russia’s FC Rubin Kazan and would supposedly be available for about €7m, although he has already stated his preference to join Benfica. The other target for Benfica is Lille’s Brazilian left-back Emerson. The 25 year-old has 84 games to his name and is allegedly worth about €2.5m.

Anyhow, just speculating there but I think most Toon fans would sleep a little easier once the Enrique/left-back situation is sorted out.

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.

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Comment on this post

25 Responses

  1. what Newcastle need to do is try and get kieran Gibbs and money for Enrique its the best way for us and Gibbs is a talent and is most likely going to be better than Enrique n a few years if he gets the games

  2. Of course that’s all essential without even mentioning the ‘serious injury’ to Fergie, our only cover…

    Worrying times…

  3. Jose as you say is going, we should just bring a replacement in now for him as he’s messing us around and we need to get OUR squad sorted, also routledge seems to be on offer again to the lower league clubs with swansea and leicester favourites to sign the lad although i would stick 2 fingers up at swansea after the way they dealt with the Neil Taylor situation although i wasn’t that keen on him.

  4. Morning Peeps, Cyprus calling.!
    How much longer are we going to let Jose dictate his own terms. These guys, like it or not , are commodditie’s , and like any rotten fruit in the barrel, it should be rooted out.
    Even if we get him settled for next season or even the next, it’s now known to be in his carachter that he will be away as soon as the mood takes him. The point is there is a weekness in his loyalty.
    For me it’s a no brainer, why shouldn’t we start the bidding war. Lets do it on our terms
    . He’s our player and we hold his contract.
    The club must look to turn this to our advantage, and the sooner the better. Sign this or sodd off. Simples.

  7. Spot on porciestreet – if he wants to leave, so be it. He’s played well for us, so thanks – but if he doesn’t want to stay then he needs to do the decent thing and leave now, so we can replace him in good time. I think, unfortunately, the absence of a transfer request is all about money…so he doesn’t lose the signing on fee at his next club. The game today is more and more about money…and less and less about football…

    As suggested, the club should take control here, clearly announce something along the lines of “he’s yours for 10 million euros, come and get him”. This way, we’d flush out any bidders whether home or abroad, and then be able to replace him without a mad, last minute rush. Hopefully, not only him but also some decent cover for left back too.

  8. Me i would be quite happy to take lose on the spanish twonk and dump him in the reserves for the year out of sight out of mind

  10. I still don’t understand why Enrique suddenly thinks he deserves CO football. Can anyon

  11. Didn’t Partrige say in the week all positions put on hold til we find a striker?
    Seems like stupid recruiting policy….clueless.

  12. i do remember newcastle being interested in the celtic left back izaguirre do a swap deal forster for him mayby…and we are back in for sturridge! :)

  13. As a fan of Jose, I must say I’m very dissapointed with him, he has let it be know for months that he wants to leave. I think the club have tripped over themselves to give him a new deal and he still is pissing us about.

    As Dave B say’s the club should take control and put him on the transfer list. How has this situation been arrived at where you have a player who wants to leave, but they can mess their club(s) around waiting for another club to make an offer for them so they, the player(s), can get a signing on fee, its ridiculous.

  14. Agreed, izaguerre is quality give celtic foster and 3.5 mill and we take izaguerre and scott brown as cover for tiote if he gets red carded (which he will because he is a holding midfielder) i really think this enrique saga should be sorted and we should set a ridiculous asking price in order to start the bidding and let the teams know where willing to do business.

  15. “As a fan of Jose, I must say I’m very dissapointed with him, he has let it be know for months that he wants to leave. I think the club have tripped over themselves to give him a new deal and he still is pissing us about”

    Do we know for sure they came up with a great deal or even a deal at all ? Lets face it if they think they can get £15m for him (which they can’t) then they’d rather have the cash than Jose.

    However the point you’re all missing is that a club has to make a bid for him before he goes anywhere ! If he goes to the Gooners they’re probably doing a “Fatman” and waiting until the eleventh hour before making a derisory bid which we cannot turn down. So blaming Jose for the lack of transfer enquiries/activity is rather like blaming Fatman for being a complete tool – nothing he can do about it !

  16. Just to follow that point, there will be those who may say “Jose could sign another contract” so there is something he can do about it !

    However its looking more and more likely that Jose will want a crack at the Spanish LB position as the ageing Capdevila has to be replaced sooner rather than later ! It doesnt help though if his experience is limited to playing BPL games for a mid table club with little or no ambition.

    Which is why he wants CL football and why he’ll head off to the Emirates or some other CL team.

  17. thanks for the service Jose, but there’s the door. go get your fitness on someone else’s dime.

  18. AndyMac says:
    July 17, 2011 at 1:52 pm

    “Do we know for sure they came up with a great deal or even a deal at all ?”

    Pardew said that Enrique was offered a great deal by the club Andy, but that’s all there is.

  19. At the end of the day we’ll probably be lucky to get back the 6 million quid or so we paid for him. Sad really…

  20. AndyM – Jose was offered a ‘great deal’ by the club according to Alan Pardew, this was reported by various media sources just before the end of last season None of us know for sure who was offered what, when or how, we can only go by what the media reports.

    This blog and others would be pointless otherwise, all discussions are generated by the media, whether any of their statements/articles are true is another matter entirely.

  21. As someone who championed Jose from day one, you could see he’d be a great player, i can’t wait for the door to smack him upside the ass on the way out.

    Same as any other player, if you want out, go, we don’t need bad attitudes around the place.

    Ta, but be off with you now.
    & make it snappy!

  22. Didn’t AP mention a deal that was up with the best wages we’re paying, last week?

  23. I haven’t seen anything that specifically mentions wages Clint but I would presume that for something to be classified as an ‘excellent offer’ the wages would be up there with (or beyond) our higher paid players.

  24. There was some mention Hugh, i can’t remember where i read it though.
    & it defo was along the lines of ‘up there with our best paid…’
    that’s not a quote though.

  25. Munich Mag says:

    “At the end of the day we’ll probably be lucky to get back the 6 million quid or so we paid for him. Sad really”

    A classic example of NUFC working at their naive best ! Jose wasnt going to stay because he has ambitions that this club couldnt match. The best time to get rid was when the bindipping reds came calling and offered us £10m. Greedy Fatman holds out for £15m and ultimately Jose will slope off for what we paid or less :(

    Two issues here:

    1. Surely even a fat, thick muppet like Ashley can see that Jose isnt going to hang around a mid table club and watch his international and club career sit in limbo for three to four years ?

    2. Dont think we’re the only ones who can play hardball with players and transfer fees. We’ve been “lucky” once to have milked the bdr’s, it aint gonna happen every season ! Sometimes you just have to hold your hand up and pay the asking price otherwise you end up with Shefki Kuqi.