There’s a report in the Mirror today that both Newcastle United and Aston Villa are interested in signing winger Andros Townsend from Spurs, who has now returned to training after suffering a shoulder injury in pre-season.

Andros himself is also keen on getting regular football this season, so he has a chance of making Roy Hodgson’s England squad for the Euro 2016 Championships in France next summer.

Andros Townsend – Newcastle interested

Tim Sherwood will know all about Andros, after Tim was at Spurs for a number of years as a coach at various levels, including head coach.

Aston Villa also have big money to spend, after getting around £33M from Liverpool for striker Christian Benteke – that’s a massive fee the Red have paid for Benteke.

Andros has played 86 games with 10 goals for Spurs so far, and Spurs want £15M for him, which seems high, but he is an English International, and they tend to go at a high price these days.

He played for most of the England Youth sides and made his full debut for England back in October of 2013 against Montenegro, and he had a great game in the 4-1 win – making one goal and scoring a fantastic goal to be voted the Man of the Match.

But he has since found it difficult to get caps for England, and currently has 9 caps with three goals.

He has spent time on loan getting first team experience at a number of clubs including Ipswich. Milwall, Watford, Leeds United and Birmingham, and while on loan at 9 different clubs in total, he’s made another 110 first team appearances with 11 goals.

His fee of £15M could be a problem for Newcastle,  but there again our reported number one winger target is French U21 International Florian Thauvin, and Marseilles want £15M for the 22 year-old.

It’s difficult to know if we are really interested in this player, but we have been linked with him continually over the summer.

What do you think?

Comments welcome.

Note: Alex Wannop is fund raising for a local Newcastle Charity called Tiny Lives, who support the Special Care Baby Unit at the Newcastle RVI.

Alex’s son Isaac was born by emergency C-section at the hospital, and the doctors by their skill and efforts saved his son’s life.

Please see if you can help Alex in raising money by donating to his just giving page for what is a very worthwhile cause.