Available at a knock down price?I have spoke before about the possibilities of Newcastle signing Manchester City defender, Nedum Onouha, twice before in fact, and now it seems that the press are starting to run with the story.
I must stress it is being reported in The Sun, but apparently Hughton is lining up a £3.5 million deal to bring the former England Under-21 international to St James’ Park over the summer. It also claims that this ‘bid’ will use up nearly half of our summer transfer budget, which means we could be looking at a kitty of around £10 million to purchase players with. As much as I would love this to be true, I really can’t see it. Although it does seem to roughly tie in with my initial valuation of around £3 million. Unfortunately though, as will be the case a lot more often over the summer, I suspect this is just paper talk. (more…)
Simpson: Facing a fitness race.The Chronicle is reporting some rather worrying news today concerning right-back Danny Simpson, claiming there is a race to get him fit for the new season.
That seems a bit strange to me really, as most of us have known that Simpson has been carrying a niggling injury through the last few months of the season. I always thought it concerned the players hip though, and not his ankle as is being reported.
Let’s not forget that Simpson played on the last day of the season in what was a meaningless game really, the day after which he underwent surgery on a damaged tendon. So surely if it was likely that Simpson would be out for this length of time, the common sense thing to do would have been to send him off for his operation as soon as the title was wrapped up and give the lad a headstart on his recovery? We have Ryan Taylor who could have covered in that instance so it wouldn’t have been a problem, which is why I smell some sensational reporting. (more…)
