Will United Sell Cheick Tiote?
Posted on May 21st, 2012 | 66 Comments |
One such player is Cheick Tiote – United’s beast of a defensive midfielder. One of the reasons our defence did so well in the season just finished was that the opposing teams had to get past Tiote first – no easy task. So it was surprising, and somewhat puzzling to the Toon Army, that with 11 games still to go the ever popular Derek Llambias decided to hang a “For Sale” sign around Tiote’s neck.
As I’m sure you’ll remember, for whatever reason Llambias decided to bang his gums to the press in March and utter the words:
“We’ll be losing one or two names this summer, but that’ll be regenerated back into the squad, for instance, Tiote has been with us a year and a half. He is out there. People know he’s a good player. He’s proven in the Premier League. How are we going to stop a big club from coming in for him? It’ll be very hard. If someone knocks on the door, the reality may be that we have to trade.”
Tiote has repeatedly gone on record in the past as saying he likes it here and doesn’t want to go anywhere.
“I’m a Newcastle player, my future is at Newcastle. I’m playing for Newcastle and I have to finish this season strongly and help the team get into Europe”.
There’s also an unsubstatiated rumour that he has already turned down Chelsea once because he didn’t want to live in London – can’t blame him for that!
However Alan Pardew has also seen fit to fan the flames and hint at a Tiote exit, although he at least has had the decency to state that it would take big money to get him away from United:
‘We have one or two players here that top clubs, I’m sure, will be interested in, but the one thing I would say on that is that they are going to have to pay a lot of money to take anybody out of here because we are obviously in a good position, not just on the playing side, but financially as well. ‘We are always on our guard with Cheik because we realise that to us, he is very, very important and it would be very, very difficult to get him out of here.’
Sadly, there are clubs out there who have that sort of money. Chelsea and Manchester United have been named in the media as having more than a passing interest in our midfield stopper, but what they may have to decide is whether they want to pay the sort of money that Mike Ashley will demand or whether there are other options out there which would represent better value for money. They would also need to take into account that he gets a lot of yellow cards and will be missing when the Africa Cup Of Nations comes around next season.
Articles have already started to appear in the media about United selling Tiote. Recently Duncan White of the Sunday Telegraph said “I think Newcastle will do controlled selling – people will look at [Cheick] Tioté and [Yohan] Cabaye, and, apparently, Demba Ba has an interesting release clause. I predict Tioté and one other to go.” At best just speculation, at worst – he knows something.
We’ll just have to see. Articles are also already beginning to appear in the local North East press about who United might get to replace Tiote if he goes. Vurnon Anita of Ajax has recently been mentioned – 23 years old and 3 caps already for the Netherlands. Personally I would love it, just love it if Ashley came out and said “None of our big players are available at any price”. Sadly, as we know, that isn’t going to happen folks.
NUFCBlog Author: UTD111
UTD111 has written 59 articles on this blog.
Newcastle finished 5th in the prem. That’s the players not the city, if we are to improve then changes must occur. I think Tiote is an excellent player, but if big money is to finance the next stage then you won’t get it flogging Simpson or Williamson. Unfortunately we didn’t qualify for the CL so the big money needs to come from somewhere…that’s not likely to be from Ashley’s pocket, so I suspect they may sell a big name player. So be it….football is an evolving process and if they really want to kick-on and compete in domestic & European competitions then NUFC will need to evolve also.