Sky Sports is reporting that Newcastle United have again won the race to sign another highly-rated youngster, this time it’s Slovenian 16 year-old youngster Haris Vuckic from NK Domzale.
Harris Vuckic – 16 year old attacking midfielder
Sky Sports is reporting that the gifted 16 year old teenager is regarded as one of Europe’s brightest talents, and reports suggest he underwent a recent trial at AC Milan. We’re not sure how much Newcastle paid for him but we understand it’s around £400K, for the young Solovenian.
But Newcastle have definitely secured his signature, with the attacking midfielder Vuckic signing a three-and-a-half-year deal at St James’ Park. The youngster currently stands at 6’2″ tall and is probably still growing.
So another top youngster will be arriving at the club in January, along with 18 year-old Brazilian forward Cai Ferreirra, so we continue to bring future top players (hopefully) into the Tyneside club – sounds good to us.
The capture demonstrates Newcastle’s growing policy of scouring the world in the search of top up and coming talent to bring to Tyneside, and then develop the youngsters through the Newcastle Youth Academy, under the watchful eye of Director, Richard Money.
Just rounding off the current transfer situation with half of the 33 day transfer window over today:
- It looks like Reenes have turned down our offer of £5M for midfielder Stephane Mbia – so we’re not sure what happens now
- There will be a trial game next Tuesday involving Peter Lovenkrands and our two proposed loan signings – one Italian and one Argentine – so presumably we may hear we have three players into the club after that trial game, if all goes well
- At least two top youngsters will come into the club in January, and hopefully even more – we got five top youngsters in last January.
- Joe has said there will be new investment in players in the summer, and we assume at some point he will accept the formal offer made by Ashley – but it may not be until the summer.
We just cannot see Joe turning away from what he has said many times before is the dream job for him - There was news today that we had had an offer of £1.3M accepted by Espanyol for former Liverpool full-back Steve Finnan, after the Hull City deal fell through. But we have heard nothing more about that – so we’re not sure if it is a true story or not – but we hope it is, because we can use Steve for the rest of the season, and maybe another season to allow some of our youngsters to come through at the club.
But we must keep pushing ahead in the transfer market as we’d like to see at least 5 top players into the club by February 2nd, when the window closes – which is two weeks on Monday.
Comments welcome.
71 comments so far
Norn Iron Magpie
Jan 17, 2009 at 1:58 AM
Comment #41Tom_Toon
Bought a nice Bob Marley pic still on my kitchen wall. Not sure about Richard shoe bomber but Zaki would be a good buy. Maybe acting on impulse.
RyanToon
Jan 17, 2009 at 1:59 AM
Comment #42motaeb would be like zaki, i know it. shikabala ive heard you mention him before, mido isnt nowhere near motaeb IMO.
permits? what theve all played about alot of games at international level? i watched alot of international football and ive never seen them play?
Tom_Toon
Jan 17, 2009 at 2:00 AM
Comment #43Ben Yahia has played a lot, Nafkha is getting there, he is a regular now. Mouhibi is just starting.
Moteab is really poor when I’ve seen him.
RyanToon
Jan 17, 2009 at 2:01 AM
Comment #44whose this chikhaoui play for? fc basel dont he?
RyanToon
Jan 17, 2009 at 2:02 AM
Comment #45or bordeaux? or is that chamakh im thinking off???
Tom_Toon
Jan 17, 2009 at 2:05 AM
Comment #46Zurich, Chamakh plays for Bordeaux.
If Chikhaoui wasn’t injured in the summer window I think he would have gone to either Marseille, Benfica, Hamburg, Bayern or Juventus.
RyanToon
Jan 17, 2009 at 2:09 AM
Comment #47oh ok, this ariza makakula was he any good at benfica?
Norn Iron Magpie
Jan 17, 2009 at 2:09 AM
Comment #48Tom_Toon
Dont think he would come to us then?
Tom_Toon
Jan 17, 2009 at 2:13 AM
Comment #49Chikhaoui? Probably not now.
Ryan – He’s a good player, pretty poor at Benfica though.
Norn Iron Magpie
Jan 17, 2009 at 2:16 AM
Comment #50We will have a good team in 3 to 4 years. Very worried about right now.
RyanToon
Jan 17, 2009 at 2:17 AM
Comment #51ok im off to bed now, 1-0 to the toon tommorow!
Norn Iron Magpie
Jan 17, 2009 at 2:18 AM
Comment #52night mate
howay the lads
Matthew Tom
Jan 17, 2009 at 2:24 AM
Comment #53Dennis, if the lad is any good I will personally kiss your arse. Forget how wrinkly it will be when this lad eventually gets to play, I don’t care any more. I will kiss wrinkly, cock-eyed nasty arse, just bring us a trophy winning team.
mrtoad
Jan 17, 2009 at 2:45 AM
Comment #54Got to say Tom_Toon that its all well and good finding out about such players… (ala the movie goal but in a diff place!) but look at Aston Villa… They are where they are due to solid spending and holding on to their top players. Seems a good strategy to buy people like L Young and the N Shorey’s of this world who are decent prem players, and not total gambles considering the position we are in. Don’t get me wrong tho, if there only costing a few hundred k each then no harm done, but i just wish we could buy some solid prem players! or at worst some decent championship players such as that Sheff Utd defender. But hey, if life as a nufc fan were that simple…. we would not have this blog!!
Toon_Sydney
Jan 17, 2009 at 3:25 AM
Comment #55matthew tom – ur scarin me , id kiss his ass if we won champions league, not the intertoto cup or carling cup
Brutooon
Jan 17, 2009 at 3:52 AM
Comment #56a good team in 3-4 years time
but we will be in relegation battle this season
Toon_Ksk (ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!)
Jan 17, 2009 at 4:19 AM
Comment #57I think news regarding the identity of the two loanees will be leaked out on Sunday or Monday in preparation for the trial game on Tuesday. They will probably arrived ahead of time to get settled in. When they do, there will be news on them. Looking forward to that. My only worries are they are not really that good and its just JK blowing his trumpet to keep expectations high.
toonarmyuk
Jan 17, 2009 at 8:24 AM
Comment #58Sounds really good that we are still getting young uns in. 2 points though:
1. Nothing official from nufc.co.uk on either of these young lads yet!
2. Has Kinnear already said that he prefers not to use the youngsters if possible (prefers experienced players). As is the case with Ranger, Kadar, Lua Lua (although he has played a few minutes), etc
Nick D
Jan 17, 2009 at 8:37 AM
Comment #59Dan Scott absolutely spot on.
Reillers how narrow minded can you be, saying youngsters are a waste of money. It’s 400K, not 6M for a Smith, Duff, Barton etc.
It’s a terrific investment and you need to look at the bigger picture.
But as Dan Scott says, we don’t have the right manager to bring youth through. Kinnear is old school and anti youth.
I don’t necessarily think we need to be spending fortunes. Here and there, put the kids in for 20-30 mins. We’ve still got a lot of old heads like Beye, colo, spidey etc to help them settle in.
neeraj
Jan 17, 2009 at 8:43 AM
Comment #60this is a sign that MA is staying…..
macn0ble (Finland)
Jan 17, 2009 at 9:29 AM
Comment #61My opinion on the loanees is that if we see Saviola (The Argentinian) arriving, like some of the press has been touting. You can be absolutely sure, that Owen will not carry on in NUFC and the board and Michael know it already.
any guesses on the Italian??
If we are in for a left back there are limited amount of Italian full backs available. Only player that comes to mind is, yes, Liverpool’s Dossena.
What do you guys think?
macn0ble (Finland)
Jan 17, 2009 at 9:31 AM
Comment #62BTW cheers for the brilliant blog Ed, it keeps getting better.
Matt
Jan 17, 2009 at 9:45 AM
Comment #63Just to let you know, this guy is touted as a massive future star. I know it’s kinda crass to use this as an example but even football manager is bigging him up in their database.
If we keep getting youth like this in 2-3 years we’re going to have a stunning squad of Arsenal calibur youngsters.
murvar
Jan 17, 2009 at 10:49 AM
Comment #64JFK is a complete idiot and out of his depth BUT I don’t think he can be blamed for not deploying the kids or accused of not being interested in them; now is not the time – it can ruin them to play in a struggling team where the experienced and more talented guys are failing. This is what Ardiles did – he played kids and we were in dire strits, although it was fun to watch even tho we got beat all the time! And not too many of them came through – Elliot Watson and Clark the best of them.
We are tending to assume that all these kids are going to be world-beaters but we know that if one or two get to international level we will have done weel; most will all by the wayside – that’s the way it is. As they grow and get thrust into harder situations you find out more about them, and just who has the talent, temperament, fitness and luck to thrive
craig s chisholm
Jan 17, 2009 at 11:47 AM
Comment #65its great we are scouring the globe for raw talent but its a flawed system for us at this time. its obvious that ashley wants to have a great team in about 5 years time as he is buying for the future. he wants the team to be worth hundreds of millions on talent alone nad he is banking on the likes of this new 400k kid becoming worth 30 million etc in 5 years time. its a great idea and i will give him that – a first ever. thats where his good plan stops though. he has stopped all investment in the current first team and its a shambles, with everyone wanting to leave and with us going down this season to the fizzy league. all of the talent he has spent ages scouring the globe for will leave also once we are down in some obscure toss league outside the prem. if these guys are as good as we are led to beleive then they will have many suitors in the prem and other top leagues who will just come in and take them off us. in which case its all bloody pointless. then again, another angle would be if ashley thinks he will recoup his outlay by bringing on these young guns and is hoping that they will replay a vast amount of his 240 million outlay to buy us in the first place, ashley has already recouped alot of this money through zero investment in two years. So, if he gets his money largely back by flogging everyone inc the young stars in a few years, he wont really give a wank what league we are in cos he will have had his money out of us. thats the shame, ashley is a business man , nothing more, he is not a football man.
we need investment now in the first team otherwise everything will cruble, right through to the acadamey hotshots doing a runner. its liek anything else, if the foundations are not right, the whole thing will come tumbling down. i think we are on a knife edge now, will he invest in the first team or not? we need a big cash injection. ok, sometimes you get bargain players that are great and sometimes the high paid ones are crap. as a general rule though, you get what you pay for, in everything in life, that includes footy players. for me, i think we need a mix up of top draw, bargin buys and raw talent, we must have more top draw that shit though, this is whre we are fallign down now. all we are aiming for is the bottom draw – for everyone, we will go down with this phylosophy.
alextoon
Jan 17, 2009 at 12:01 PM
Comment #66Thing is though, as soon as any of these youngsters show any sign of talent in the first team they will sold for a big profit.
Jan Stavik
Jan 17, 2009 at 12:45 PM
Comment #67Is Wise preparing for Championship?
Stop wasting time finding youngsters now, we need players for the 1st team!
heavyhittas
Jan 17, 2009 at 1:12 PM
Comment #68Why buy young kids because they wont get a chance to play for the first team and so wont develop? How do Man Utd and Liverpool introduce the kids to the first team? You have to ask the question, if you were a young talent would you honsestly risk coming to Newcastle, I think not?
black magpie
Jan 17, 2009 at 2:17 PM
Comment #69links people
DJG
Jan 17, 2009 at 2:35 PM
Comment #70He looks older than 16. Better to buy them now than when they cost £10M. But we will have to be patient. Seem to be a lot of forwards. What about signing some midfielders Dennis? lol.
waddler
Feb 13, 2009 at 8:48 AM
Comment #71Its ironic isn’t it.
A bunch of Cockney’s showing us how to develop a top team by going out and buying the best youngsters available.
The conveyor belt is revolving and in 5 years we will be watching something special, something grown and not bought.
Ashley I take my hat off to you and Wise, keep up the good work and for gods sake don’t be deflected from your project by fools who cannot see the logic in your move to corner this market.