Another midfielder?It will come as no surprise to Newcastle United fans that the club is now being strongly linked with another midfielder with French connections, although Arsenal’s alleged interest in Joey Barton may be a little more surprising.
I am most disappointed to find we haven’t signed any new players yet today. Ashley oot!
There is a fair bit of gossip though and I’ll summarise a couple of the grooviest bits of it here. Bear in mind though that the gossip provided in this article is done so by professionals and you must under no circumstances try this at home.
This might be hard to believe, but we’re being connected with yet another midfielder in the shape of Adel Taarabt. There were rumblings about him a few weeks ago too – and we did apparently get a £5m bid for him rejected in January – but the fires of speculation have been reignited with some comments Taarabt has made recently. The QPR player said:
“They want me to stay four years on the same terms. I don’t want to sign for four years then after one year I am going to be back in The Championship.
“No disrespect, but if we keep the same players, it will be very difficult to stay in the Premier League when you are playing Manchester United and Chelsea.
“I helped QPR win promotion but they will not offer me a better contract. They say I am already on big wages.” (more…)
All aboard the arkIs Newcastle United embarking upon a ‘new era’? This humble blogger thinks so and attempts to quantify some of the changes that mark this new era.
Remember when God supposedly gave us all a rinse, rebooting mankind with Noah and what must have been an exceedingly large ark? I get the impression that a similar process is underway at Newcastle United at the moment. A kind of ‘out with the old and in with the new’ situation. It seems like the Good Lord Ashley and Archangel Llambias are doing some smiting and rebuilding the club in their own image (and didn’t Ashley smite Pestilence when he got rid of Dennis Wise?).
The obvious smiting begins with Nolan’s move to West Ham, Barton’s disappearing contract, the possible departure of players like Enrique, Jonas and Best (and, yes, I admit it’s only speculated that they’ll go at the moment), all seemingly replaced by an influx of Frenchmen. The wisdom of tearing out the crux of the team that got us promoted and established us once again as a Premier League side remains to be seen. The proof of the pudding is in the eating as they say (or in just being edible if it’s one of my wife’s puddings) and we’ll know over the next season or two whether Ashley’s gamble has paid off. (more…)
Not only does it save money, but it's also French!Mike Ashley bought Newcastle United to much fanfare in 2007 via St. James Holdings. Opting against doing the sensible thing and lodging a formal bid, he just went out and bought the stocks, forcing the then hospitalised Freddy Shepherd into advising shareholders to sell, sell, sell!
Thus came an end to Shepherd’s reign of terror over our club. He inherited a wonderful thing from Sir John Hall and promptly ran it, head first, into the ground. That was to end with our new chairman. A young man, famed throughout the great maze of Eldon Square for his cheap sportswear and throughout the business world as being reckless in his deals.
It was all roses for a while as Mike Ashley enjoyed a [many] pint [pints] with the fans in the Strawberry and even snubbed the directors box in favour of the Leazes End. Had Freddy Shepherd had done that, he’d have been hog tied, placed on a spit and spun over an open flame in the centre circle with his, rather ample, meat donated to third world areas of our great Earth such as Sunderland and Liverpool. (more…)
Birmingham target, allegedlyBirmingham allegedly want Newcastle’s Leon Best. Dan Gosling and Hatem Ben Arfa gets in some early pre-season training. And Michael Owen seems to have upset a few people.
With all the speculation about who we might be buying, I’d quite forgotten that other teams might want some of our players other than Jose Enrique.
If you believe the Mail (no tittering), freshly relegated Birmingham are after Leon Best to replace Cameron Jerome who Alex McLeish seems resigned to losing. I actually thought Leon Best did a decent job for us last season, getting 6 goals in 12 games, and of all our current strikers he’s the one I’d most like to keep, but I guess it depends on who we bring in over the summer to enhance our goal-scoring capabilities.
How much do you think Best is worth anyway?
Both Dan Gosling and Hatem Ben Arfa have made an early return for pre-season training to ensure that they’re fully fit for next season. (more…)
Fuming after being left outRumour has it Newcastle United are after Dimitar Berbatov, although personally I think that’s a load of codswallop.
The Sun is allegedly the source of the rumour that Berbatov wants to come to Newcastle after being left out of Manchester United’s Champions League side that lost to Barcelona on the weekend.
And supposedly Alan Pardew would set fire to his gentleman’s area if it brought the striker to St James’ Park.
Manchester United paid Spurs £30.75m for Berbatov in 2009 but he will allegedly be available for a mere £7.5m now.
The Bulgarian forward has undoubted ability having scored 220 goals in 495 appearances at league level and 48 goals in 77 appearances for Bulgaria at international level.
But I think this is a load of rubbish personally.
First, Berbatov is 30, putting him over the age that’s generally considered club policy in terms of transfers these days (although I admit I’ve never heard either Ashley or Pardew state an absolute age beyond which a player is considered too old to join the Toon). (more…)
