Toon search for a central defender sees bid for Mariappa rejected
Posted on January 24th, 2012 | 31 Comments |
Now that we’ve unexpectedly strengthened our strike force with the addition of Papiss Demba Cissé, the club’s attentions have turned back to what they said was the priority position they need to get cover for. Namely the central defence. A fact that Pardew reiterated yesterday when he said:
“We want to bring a defender in, that’s what I’ve said and we’ll try and do that if we can because we ain’t got no cover. If we had an injury at centre-half, we’re going to look vulnerable. The phone will be switched on and I’ll be monitoring the transfer window”
According to Sunday’s Sun, Pardew still has his full £8m transfer budget available to him as the money to buy Cissé came from the summer transfer budget, and Pardew said:
“I wouldn’t bring a player in if I didn’t think he could challenge for the first team – full stop. If I don’t think a player can come straight into the first team, it makes no difference to me.“
If press reports are to be believed we haven’t had much luck in our pursuit of defender so far though. We have allegedly had 3 bids for West Ham’s James Tomkins turned down and now turned our attention to Watford’s Adrian Mariappa instead. However, according to the Daily Mail we’ve had a £3m bid for him turned down too. Some slightly earlier reports suggest that we also had a £2m offer turned down, but I don’t know if that means we made a £2m offer first and then improved it to a £3m offer or whether the press was just confused about how much we offered.
Much was rumoured about Montpellier’s Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa at one time but I’m not sure what happened to that.
Meanwhile, moving away from the defence, it seems that Auxerre striker Alain Traoré claimed that he had ‘received a proposal’ from Newcastle United’s directors a few days ago, although his club’s president insists there have been no bids. It could be that there was some interest in him before we got Cissé but have now cooled our interest.
We are also apparently watching French Ligue 2 winger Anthony Knockaert who, when asked by Football Mercato “Newcastle monitors your performance. What exactly?“, said:
“They are in touch with my agent. Now, I take care of my work and nothing else. My agent does not put me in mind for all that I can demonstrate the best way. He lets me work, I do not take myself too much of a lead. I do my job, many young take the steps themselves, I do not take the lead.”
This definitely looks like ‘one for the future’ though as the 20 year old Guingamp player only has 25 Ligue 2 games to his name (and 2 goals).
Right, well I’m off on holiday for a few weeks now so I’ll catch you all when I get back. In the interim all I can say is Howay The Lads!
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.
Well I’d rather have a 20 year old Guingamp player only has 25 Ligue 2 games to his name than that lump of wood known to us a Strola playing thats for sure… especially if he’s go the hump because we’ve brough in Cisse to play along side Ba….
As for defenders, why would we want this guy, he’s no different to Perch ffs… I’d rather have a under par Kadar as backup than spend over £3m on someone who’s not going to improve our squad any… the fact that no one know much about him says he’s a nobody & we’ll just have another squad players who’s picking up wages & getting no games… don’t we have enough of those already!!!
Have a good Hol Hugh, hope yer still gonn awatch the games while yer away.. where too btw???