Peter on his bike?Peter Lovenkrands has admitted that he may be forced to leave Newcastle in order to save his international career.
Lovenkrands hasn’t really had a look in this season and has only featured five times for the Newcastle first-team, with three of those appearances coming in the Carling Cup.
This has left the 30-year old forward having to admit that he could be forced to move back to Denmark to play his football as he looks to continue his international career. After all, it’s hard to get picked for your country if you aren’t playing for your club, or at leas it should be anyway. Whilst I personally would be sad see the Dane leave, I can understand his reasons for wanting to do so.
Lovenkrands was influential in last seasons promotion charge and bagged himself 16-goals as Newcastle romped away with The Championship. His pace and movement troubled defences last season, but my only issue with him is the fact that if he isn’t scoring then he isn’t doing much else and tends to disappear from matches. (more…)
Kerching!More details are starting to emerge over the reason why Steven Taylor has been transfer listed by Newcastle.
Initial indications suggest that the reason for this is indeed that contract talks have broken down, but who is to blame for it?
I would suggest that his agent isn’t too far away from being the cause of the problem, and Metro Radio has suggested that Taylor didn’t even know he was going to be placed on the transfer list.
It isn’t the end of the world though and I feel that the club may be playing hardball in an attempt to get Taylor to instruct his agent to accept a more realistic salary. Taylor has apparently been offered a four-year deal worth around £40,000 a week by the club, but either he or his agent, probably the latter in fairness, wanted nearer to £60,000 a week. (more…)
Real rumours or false dawns?Day 52, and still there is no conclusion to the series of dramatic events that have unfolded regarding the transfer/loan/whatever of Hatem Ben Arfa.
It appeared that Werder Bremen were close to sealing a deal for the Frenchman yesterday, which has been denied by them today. Just another rumour then.
At the end of the day it would appear that Newcastle still have a chance of signing the player, although heaven knows just what is going on right now. Your guess is as good as mine, but until anything is confirmed by Newcastle, or one of the other 20,000 clubs that Marseille have hawked the player around, everything is just a rumour. (more…)
Stick or twist?It’s been nearly four months since promotion back to the Premier League was guaranteed.
The mood was optimistic and getting promoted so early would surely mean we could steal a march on the competition in the transfer market, right?
Wrong, or so it seems. Here we are with only 13 days of the transfer window remaining, and still we await some key additions to our squad as we preapre to fight for our Premier League lives.
I’m not suggesting that the squad we have currently can’t survive as I believe they can, if we are able to field our best eleven in every game that is, and given our record with injuries any chance of that happening would seem unlikely. I’m also not suggesting that we won’t sign anybody else in this window, we may well do. But the way this transfer window is working out certainly has a sense of deja-vu about it. (more…)
Nolan: Fighting to be fit.The match at Manchester United last night had some positive and negative points, but one thing that was blatantly obvious is that the squad needs bolstering.
No matter which way you look at it, there is a desperate need for new faces to help out the squad. One look at the substitutes bench last night and my own concerns became apparent for all to see.
I have said all along that our first eleven should be good enough to stop up, but what about when we suffer injuries? We are experiencing some form of injury crisis now in fact, which isn’t helping the situation.
Peter Lovenkrands and Danny Guthrie missed out last night, as did Sol Campbell, Dan Gosling, Steven Taylor, Danny Simpson and Leon Best, plus there is Kevin Nolan who is now doubtful for the game against Aston Villa on Sunday. (more…)
