Does the exit beckon for Tiote?

Posted on November 20th, 2011 | 58 Comments |

Newcastle's Tiote allegedly worth £20m to Chelsea.
Chelsea sniffing around?
Newcastle United midfielder Cheick Tiote is rumoured to be on Chelsea’s shopping list for January with – supposedly – a £20m bid in the offing. But would Ashley sell him?

The latest news from the rumour-filled world of Toon speculation has Chelsea considering a £20m bid for Cheick Tiote in January. The report, coming from Brian McNally in the Sunday Mirror, seems to suggest that Tiote would indeed be sold, although only if big bucks are offered.

On the prospect of losing players in January, Pardew said:

It is going to cost a hell of a lot of money, a hell of a lot of money because we’re in that position now.

I think any of our players that get linked to other clubs, those clubs are going to need to know they’ll need to pay a shed load of money to get anyone out of this football club.

He was then asked if buyers would have to come up with the sort of ‘mega-bid’ that saw Andy Carroll leave for Liverpool, to which he said:

Absolutely! I don’t envisage anyone going out in this window. But if a club, one of the top clubs, comes in and wants to pay way, way over the odds we’ll have to look at it.

I would think that £20m for a player we paid £3.5m would indeed class as a ‘mega-bid’ and, if there’s any truth in Chelsea’s intent to bid such an amount, I think Ashley would take it and Tiote will be on his way in January.

But should he be sold?

Every player has their price, or so it’s said, but where do you draw the line between the team and the player? Let me explain. Selling a player for 500%+ profit does indeed sound like very good business and I think you can get away with that for a player here and there, but a high league position is also valuable to the club – beyond the alleged £800,000 each position is supposedly worth – and if you let too many of your star performers go the whole team’s performance could suffer. Things like ‘consistency’ are valuable assets to a team too.

Of course, some of us thought that might be the case when we sold Carroll, Barton and Nolan but we have survived – and indeed flourished – without them. However, I don’t think we can point to the sale of one player and say that because we survived without him we’ll survive without another player. I tend to think there’s likely to be a ‘tipping point’ somewhere where calamity awaits if you get rid of too many top performers.

Is Tiote that tipping point? Probably not. I think we’re a better team with him than without him, although I have no idea if he’s worth £20m to us in the grand scheme of things.

This could of course merely be a scurrilous rumour but the principles still apply, particularly given what Pardew said above.

What do you think?

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.

Related Posts:


58 Responses

  1. He will be gone if the offer is big enough. For me though I would keep him as I believe he will get better.
    Lets just hope that if there are any bids that they don’t come in at the last minute, like the Andy Carroll deal.
    I believe that if both ManUre and Chelski both make serious offers we could see a big money auction, potentially for more money than we got for Carroll.
    Lets just hope Graham Carr has a few more gems hidden up his sleeve to come in and replace any outgoing players.

  2. I mentioned last week this was going happen did I not?
    The argument is, if you sell a player like tiote, you run the risk of dropping in the league and and receiving less prize money at then end of the season.
    My argument is £20 million is more than we would get by then end of this season in the league finishing in any realistic position.
    The mentality of the club will be down to guthrie doing so well and do we need two players who are doing just a good a job in their own right as each other in the same role? It will be hard for tiote to step straight into his position and he knows that and unfortunately so will lamearse.

  3. Stephen, I would hope, though, that there’s some sort of balance to be found between financial realities and footballing ambitions.

    I’d hate us to become a club striving for mediocrity with the only aim being to achieve a profitable turnover of players.

  4. it would be a waste of a 6 year contract if he does leave, contracts dont mean a lot these days :(. newcastle are going places if they can keep the squad together a good finish to the end of the season beckons.

  5. The fact of PL reality is that there are 4-5 top teams and the rest.
    If we had a realistic chance of being one of those top teams then obviously we must keep our best players and add to them.
    But we are not – and it is almost impossible for us to become one – so we just have to be grown up about it and accept that the right offer will get any of our lads – and £20m for Tiote will be accepted!
    If you don’t like this then I’m afraid you need to sit down in a darkened room for a while and face up to reality.
    We are not seriously competing with manc manu chelski arsenal liverpool or spurs – we can give them a run for their money for a while, but not for a full season.
    We could (just) edge out liverpool or arsenal or spurs – but not 2 or 3 of them – realisticaly we can hope for a creditable 7th at best.
    Two years ago this would have been a dream! Now it is reality! We could get better over the next 3-4 seasons if we invest successfully in players in the £5-10m range but meanwhile we must face the hard fact that lads like Tiote in the £10-20m range will move on.

  6. Why does some people say they would take high money for him? He genuinely wants to play for us and is world class, yet if we keep selling our best players what is the point of us even trying to play football?

  7. Wasn’t this supposedly happening all through the summer transfer window as well? And it never happened then.

    Chelsea have been tightneing up on transfer fees over the last year or so, Torres being the exception, so I can’t see them paying £20 million for a bloke who is only gonna play when Essien is injured.

    I reckon it’s probably just another load of crap made up by the papers due to a lack of any real news, so a usual I’ll not put any faith in the rumour til I see something conrete.

    Also, while I certainly think that the lad is a very very good player for us, and has been somewhat of a revelation since joining, I’m not too convinced about him being “world class”

  8. If any of the ‘top clubs’ would come in for him, surely it’d be Arsenal? Tiote would be fantastic for them, and give them a bit of bite and steel to go with all that silky crap that hasn’t won them anything in years.

    The amount of money they have in their bank, I reckon £25M will be a fair enough amount.

    Guthrie and Cabaye can probably do a job for us in centre mid, with Gosling and Vuckic as cover – and that’s assuming Carr hasn’t got another few gems up his sleeve for the window.

    Sad though it is, every player has his price. £25M is probably more than he’s worth if we’re being honest.

  9. Hugh this is sports dire t we are talking about not the entity that used to be Newcastle united. They made it clear with the residual value comment that saw miner and Carroll leave. So I total agree that there should be a balance but it isn’t a two way split. You also have greed, spite , vengeance, rath and anger to throw in to the balance. So I think the sale of tiote will all come down to how the fans react towards the board at the home chelsea game. The thing I do believe is the only reason why guthrie is playing out of his skin is simply down to competition for places if that changes the in my opinion so will performances . But I don’t think the board will look that far.
    Personaly sturidge and the mid fielder we were linked to might be worth look. But I’d hate to see tiote go. And this is when we need to find another balance………. players going or the name changing. And to be honest I think I’m starting to come round to the idea.

  10. Given the financial situation of most clubs, even the “top” ones, then players will be sold if they can command silly inflated fees. Especially in light of the new rules being put in place. Be a shame to lose Tiote but he is not irreplaceable.

    As for the ManC game personnaly I am gutted we did not get at least a deserved point out of it. I just hope Pards and the team are spitting blood at the loss rather than patting themselves on the back at an “Honourable” defeat. For a team with real ambition there just aint no such thing.
    Considering that we are supposed to be working on our defensive qualities, I think the two penalties should never have been conceded. Trying to block a shot with your arms out is a schoolboy error and Raylor should be made to watch that video several thousand times to stress it’s stupidity. Tackling from behind in the box comes into the same category, I noticed in the ManU game that their players made a point of not doing it. And why did Richards have the freedom on the right to do virtually as he pleased?

    A lot of bloggers seem to be talking up the defeat as a good thing, sorry but I aint.

  11. Don’t forget, we’re doing the same thing to other clubs – imagine how their supporters feel when they read NUFC is after one of their best lads!
    These clubs, players & agents know the score and know our reputation – and the “rich club” reputation after the AC sale has now worn off so they know we won’t pay silly money. But we are a good “career move” with decent wages.
    And I prefer us doing this than picking up crumbs of “big name” misfits & failures as we used to do – the Owens, Duffs, Kliverts etc.

  12. SuperMac, I agree with your sentiments about getting players on the downslope of their careers such as Owen, Klivert, Rush, Barnes etc. But I thought Duff was a good buy and served us reasonably well, doing a good job for Fulham and Ireland now as well.

  13. We got beat at city last year – we got beat this year, so what? Everyone else will get beat there – some will be thrashed but we wern’t disgraced.
    And next year, well we’ll probably get beat again cos they’re better than us – but not so much better that sooner or later we’ll not get a result. They’ll loose 3 or 4 times with 4 or 5 draws – no reason from what I’ve seen it can’t be against us!
    and that goes for manu Chelski arsenal (done it) liverpool & spurs – we can’t beat them all but we can compete and get results – and they know it!

  14. Grumpy, Duff possibly yes, but his heart never looked in it to me, was he injured too much? He has looked better (in spells) since he left.

  15. I don’t do love affairs with Toon players anymore I said Tiote,Collo and a few more will be sold…..I would have said Cabaye ann Hatem as well but they have not played in the shop window long enough to attract decent money yet.

    I look at NUFC these days as a reflection of Sports Direct it is a similar mentality and retail blueprint…sign players cheap and sell them on.
    If the profits where being spent on even better players then I wouldn’t be to fussed but it will end up being spent on the latest undersoil heating and free transfers like the £35 Carroll money.

    I can see Krul being sold for megabucks as well….what an awesome young prospect.

  16. sirjasontoon says:

    November 20, 2011 at 1:44 pm

    “I look at NUFC these days as a reflection of Sports Direct it is a similar mentality and retail blueprint…sign players cheap and sell them on.
    If the profits where being spent on even better players then I wouldn’t be to fussed but it will end up being spent on the latest undersoil heating and free transfers like the £35 Carroll money.”

    They used to say that ex Juventus managibg director, “Lucky” Luciano Moggi was the master of that sort of thing SJT. He was the man who replaced Roberto Baggio with Alessandro Del Piero, sold Gianluca Vialli, Fabrizio Ravanelli and Paulo Sosa only to replace them with cheaper players such as Christian Vieri, Zenedine Zidane and Thierry Henry.

    Derek Llambias is our Lucky Luciano, or at least he seems to think he is anyway.

  17. Munich @9

    Me get real? You think they’d have Tiote, as defensive as he is, playing alongside another very defensive and better player in Essien?

    Who exactly are you gonna drop for him? Lampard? I don’t rate him as highly as some but he’s a legend at that club so he won’t give way. Ramires? He’s a full Brazil international and a very good player all round.

    Tiote is a great player for us, but in a midfield like that, I really don’t see him as anything more than a squad player.

  18. Money talks and bulls**t walks, seven days a week !
    What kind of a club are NUFC ?
    If Chelski come in with a twenty mill+ bid, Ashley will grab it in a New York second.
    That’s why he has given these guys long term contracts, so he has control.
    Would i sell him ? a guy who is the heart and soul of this team, bet your ass i would, for twenty plus million, sure.
    Then i would go out and get Sissikho and voila the perfect replacement, for a fraction of the price and every bit as good.
    Cabaye will also be headhunted, in which case hopefully Carr has someone lined up.
    It’s just the way things are, this is not the nineties, it’s the time of the oligarchs, the super rich who can throw money around like confetti.
    And obviously we are not prepared to compete, that becomes obvious by Ashleys parsimonious attitude.
    So sure we may have a few successes, here and there, but we are not going to be a top side, unless we are prepared to spend like the oligarchs.
    So a reasonable top ten side with a good scouting system, but also a selling club, who’s focus is more concerned with the bottom line, than football success.
    Ah well !

  19. Is there truth in the rumor ?
    Tell me which EPL side would’nt like to have Tiote sitting in front of their back four ?
    He has improved his game considerably since arriving, looking for the pass instead of just getting rid of the ball, picking his shots, instead of landing guys in the stand, even taking the occasional shot.
    Not many do it better and don’t forget he continues to learn and improve.

  20. Chuck says:

    November 20, 2011 at 4:26 pm

    “Tell me which EPL side would’nt like to have Tiote sitting in front of their back four ?”

    Chuck, I may be wrong but if I were an EPL side, I would insist on him being mostly in a standing position during games before I paid £20 million for him.

  21. Only strengthen’s my argument, concerning the oligarchs and money, when i look at the L’Pool and Chelsea benches and see Eighty five million worth, and thats just two players, sitting, that’s of course Torres and Carroll.

  22. Workey
    Sitting or standing, not too many attackers relish the thought of going one on one with him, if they called Essien the Buffalo, wonder what they call Tiote ?

  23. My Christmas wish list,

    Sissokho- attacking left wing back or midfielder.

    Pieters-Can play CD or LB

    Twelve million the pair.

    Jr.Hoilett-AM or forward, free agent.

    That’s it, not too much to ask ?

    Thats it 2-1 liverpool, whats up with Chelsea, becoming an average side ?
    Get the check book out Roman, spend some of those billions, do we have a deal for you!

  24. Chuck says:

    November 20, 2011 at 5:43 pm

    “wonder what they call Tiote ?”

    Well I call him “Mr.T” since he got that Mohican. You ain’t gettin’ past me crazy fool!

  25. well well, chelski beaten – and we did not bad against the mega-rich leaders – and we’re still 3rd in the greatest league in the world!
    not a bad week realy!
    and chelski come here on the 3rd Dec – my birthday! how about a nice little pressie for me lads – 2-0 would do nicely thankyou.
    as for manu next week? how about a draw? 1-1

    HWTL

  26. scottie says:
    November 20, 2011 at 9:38 am
    £10m + Sturridge would be good!!

    £1 + Sturridge would be good!!!!!

  27. I’ve just replaced yesterday’s highlights with the 15 minute ones from MOTD now. They seemed to be posted a little later than usual this time.

  28. as the managerial genius souness said – you win nothing with a team of James Milners – was he watching city?

  29. Supermac says:

    November 20, 2011 at 6:58 pm

    “was that self-censorship worky?”

    I made a typo error with the bold tag which made the comment invisible Supermac.

  30. £20m, with a 6 year contract to run, we don’t need the cash, in jan, to a top 3/4 competitor?

    :lol:

    That is no where near over-paying.
    That’s way too cheap, joke money.

    Low self esteem or what?

    Try £40m to start, if they are that desperate.

  31. hoy Kilgore_D_Sprout mate, try this little trick of worky’s “I made a typo error with the bold tag which made the comment invisible”

  32. CLiNT FLiCK says:

    November 20, 2011 at 10:40 pm

    “£20m, with a 6 year contract to run, we don’t need the cash, in jan, to a top 3/4 competitor?

    That is no where near over-paying.
    That’s way too cheap, joke money.”

    Clint, It’s about what the club would get for 5-10 years of stadium naming rights in the real world if anyone were remotely interested, which they aren’t.

  33. Supermac says:
    November 20, 2011 at 11:00 pm

    hoy Kilgore_D_Sprout mate, try this little trick of worky’s “I made a typo error with the bold tag which made the comment invisible”

    Sorry, was that aimed at me in particular or was it simply the ramblings of a fool?

    Much like the utterances of the dark-skinned mohican as previously mentioned? Whose utterances of course have now been preceded over time by crap with a silent ‘c’ and is oft heard to say “yo upside yo face, bitch, I ain’t getting in no plane, fool. Just call me Biggee Rap, innit”?

    Which is what matters, mo fo.

    We’re down on the streets ;)

  34. Kaz LuaLua’s loan made permanent – isn’t he the type of young player we are supposed to be attracting and bringing on? I would have thought at least one more season’s loan before making our minds up – surely it wasn’t for the money (but I’ve seen no reported fee).

  35. Nike £10m a year SJP stadium sponsorship deal by Christmas? If so then perhaps Cashley’s a financial genius!

  36. Some on here aren’t going to like this but I’ll say it anyway. We fans might be partially to blame when the likes of Tiote etc are sold. We kick up a stink when the stadium naming rights issue was mooted, if they don’t get a sponsor as a result of the negativity then the club will want to make those 8to10 million a year from other sources. Either they can put up season ticket prices or they can sell players….like it or lump it Ashley isn’t going to put in any more of his own cash, so the money will have to come from somewhere. Love him or hate him we are going to have to learn to live with him. Someone mentioned spite previously….I don’t think a cold hard business man like Ashley would allow spite or like or any other emotion enter into business decisions…he did that once before when he bought the club, and look where that’s got him!

  37. Kilgore_D_Sprout says: Likewise, Supermac, likewise

    Robert Burns says “O would some power the giftie gie us to see ourselves as others see us”

    well, world class poetry on a football blog – what next?

  38. that is Robert Burns – not Mickey Burns, if some of you fondly remember the popular winger?

    “He’s here, he’s there, he’s everyfecking where, Mickey Burns, Mickey Burns”
    – not quite world class poetry
    – but there again not quite a world class winger!

  39. Supermac says:

    November 21, 2011 at 11:12 am

    “Nike £10m a year SJP stadium sponsorship deal by Christmas? If so then perhaps Cashley’s a financial genius!”

    Or someone’s been telling porkies again Supermac.

  40. joe soap.
    it was me for art thou that mentioned spite

    and it was ashley who did get rid of the sining section?

    am i right?

    i also mentioned anger as weel

    and it was mike who dealt the vengeful deal.

    all of us who like to cus and swear.

    we were his tight arse greed will see us bare.

    for those who do not like to bath.

    like charvas, mike ashleys give us his rath.

    for it was mike ashley and his sloth ways

    that meant the singing section is’nt here to stay.

    for forgive me for mentioning some of the deadly sins

    like most of the sports direct budget bins

    you cant expect him to live less of a bitter life

    as he would be richer without his exwife

    now before i go i must just check

    only three paragraphs from me in a week???

    what the heck!!!!!!!!

  41. charvers culture –
    I WAS ON the back seat of a 38 bus heading for the West End, when two charver lasses parked themselves next to me.
    They were talking about last night, when one asked the other how she’d got on with Scott.
    “He took me behind the Youth Club and we had a snog. Then he put his hand straight up me skort.”
    “He nivva! What did y’dee?”
    “Ah smacked him rund the heed and telt’im ‘where’s your f***in’ manners? It’s tits first!’”
    Marshall Hall, Newcastle

  42. We’re a completely different and less effective team without Tiote. Guthrie’s a nice backup, but he’s a step down. Not many players have wor Cheick’s complete skill set.

    I have to wonder what SAF’s reaction would be if Anzhi offered, say, 30M for Berbatov in January even though SAF’s made it clear Berba’s in his plans. I think he’d tell the MU’s people (and they’d listen) to tell Anzhi that if they have such a hardon for Berba they will wait until the end of the season because he’s in SAF’s plans for this season and he’s not going to tear up those plans, not for any sum. But if your plans for the season amount to: make a profit in the window, well then…

  43. tunyc

    dare we play 4 5 1 ?

    with both tiote and guthrie?

    i reckon we might be more effective and instead of Guthrie having to cover for tiote he can act as a more attacking midfeilder with Ben Arfa playing off the front striker.

    personally man u won the prem last season with the same tactic but had chicarito for cover if it failed.

    i think games can be won in the first 40 minutes if you dominate mid field and you grow on the lead. how many games now are played in the last third?
    packing mid field seems to be the way forward after all what is the point in having two strikers if you cant get the ball to them to score.

    you reckon berbas worth £30 mil? isnt he out of contract in the summer?

    and berba used to be a toon fan. he had a Newcastle crest tattoo on his arm. now covered with something else.
    but whats the chances of him coming here?