Hughton considers squad4The yanking of my chain continues with cooler statements from Newcastle United manager Chris Hughton regarding the potential signing of Sol Campbell. Rumours abound as he seeks to reinforce the squad in the January transfer window. When asked about signing Campbell, Hughton replied;
“I think there is always an interest in quality players that might become available, he said.
“You do get names thrown at you and often they are not names you have actively sought.
“The situation with Sol is he we don’t know where he is at the moment. He is still a Notts County player and it’s not clear when he is able to play. Sol is one of a few players that we are interested in.”
It seems that the interest has been generated by Campbell’s camp as Sol has shown a desire to play for the Toon. Sol is currently still on the books at County, after a high profile and less than successful move. With a successful career playing for Tottenham, Arsenal and Portsmouth he is keen to seek a new home. Perhaps Sol is being astute in these ‘credit crunch’ times and thinks he has the opportunity to re-use some of the black and white from the ‘Magpies’ of Notts County, whilst minimising fuel costs on his trip into work from Northumbria. However he may need to show similar consideration to the pockets of the Toon if it comes to a signing.
Meanwhile, for Hughton, work is pretty busy. There is additional speculation around signing Gary Caldwell and Hughton’s immediate focus is on concluding a way ahead with Fabrice Pancrate.
Best of pals!Barry Moat still thinks there’s a chance of him buying Newcastle United in the future.
Apparently, whilst Moat has no immediate plans to launch another bid, he will continue to think about how he might wrest the club for Ashley in the future.
Speaking to Sky Sports News he said:
“For one reason or another it didn’t come to pass.
“It’s extremely disappointing. It’s something we’d given up a lot of time and effort and abortive costs with so I’ve been feeling pretty bruised by the whole process.
“As my wife keeps telling me, ‘No one’s died’ so you’ve got to get on. That’s fundamentally where I see it now.
“I think from my perspective I don’t think Mike Ashley wants to stay at St James’ Park for the long term, so I’ll never give up.
“I’ll keep beavering away in the background and hopefully one day we’ll get there.” (more…)
More goals at homeNewcastle United manager Chris Hughton thinks we should be scoring more goals in our home games.
Having not lost at home, perhaps Hughton thinks it’s time to entertain a little more. He said:
“I don’t think that it is necessarily the case that someone is due a beating, but we know that we can play better in front of our own fans.
“The Peterborough game was a big step forward on that front. We would like to have scored a few more goals at home and really imposed ourselves on opponents. We have done very well in terms of results and I am delighted with that but I think there is certainly a feeling within the squad that there is more to come from us with our home performances.”
Maybe there’s a bit of the Kevin Keegan in Hughton. He is however quite happy to just grind out results when we’re away:
“Away from home, I think we will continue to grind out results and that is fine. It is a long season and you don’t complain if you pick up some hard-fought points here and there.”
The return of Ameobi should help in terms of the goals scoring and apparently Hughton will spend this week finalising his January transfer targets. According to The Journal his main targets are Sol Campbell, Andy O’Brien and making Danny Simpson’s move permanent.
Ukra - Toon target?Newcastle United are interested in Portuguese under-21 forward Ukra.
Well, maybe. It comes from the Daily Mail, which is to newspapers what ‘Snakes on a Plane’ is to film history, and it doesn’t quote anybody saying they’re after anyone, so take a large pinch of salt with your porridge this morning on this one.
Ukra, whose real name is André Filipe Alves Monteiro currently plays for Sporting Olhanense, on loan from FC Porto, and has scored 7 goals in 51 career domestic games. He has also recently been included in the Portuguese under-21 squad where he’s bagged 2 goals from 4 (or possibly from 8 depending on what you read) games.
Sporting Olhanense aren’t having the best of seasons so far, currently languishing in the bottom half of the league.
The Mail seems to be basing the Toon’s interest in this player on the fact that our scouts were at the U21 England v Portugal match on the weekend and my 6th sense (I have 9), which specifically tests levels of dubiousness, is tingling.
So, who knows? Maybe there’s some truth in this and maybe not. As Hughton said on the weekend, there’s going to be speculation about our interest in various players and most of it will be nonsense.
