Last year at this time Newcastle had brought in Mehdi Abeid, Yohan Cabaye, Demba Ba and Sylvain Marveaux, but no such luck this year, with only Romain Amalfitano and Gael Bigirimana having arrived on Tyneside so far.
New arrival Romain Amalfitano – and he thought he’d be playing football!
But those two deals were very good for Newcastle, with Romain being a free agent and looking a very good player from what we can tell, and Gael costing just £1M from Coventry City, and he’s reckoned to be one of the best young players in England at just 18 years old.
Newcastle have lost five first teamers and three of them had contracts that were not renewed – Danny Guthrie, Peter Lovenkrands and Alan Smith – and Leon Best has been signed by Blackburn for £3M and goalkeeper Fraser Forster has gone north of the border to Celtic for £2M.
So far Newcastle seem to be £4M up on their transfer business, but of course we’ve had no luck yet with our transfer targets, the major two being Luuk de Jong and Mathieu Debuchy.
And Jan Vertonghen was a target at center-back, but at £9M he was too expensive, so Newcastle didn’t both going after Jan, who will join Tottenham, and there’s a couple of reasons why Newcastle will not be bringing Luuk de Jong to Tyneside.
One is that the price asked by FC Twente of £16M is far too high, although Newcastle bid £11M for the lad, and the other reason is that he wants to join Borussia Monchengladbach, so Newcastle have pulled out of that deal, and are going after other targets.
We still think Newcastle have a decent chance of signing Mathieu Debuchy, and he would be a great signing, and maybe something can happen this week, since he’s now returned from holiday.
And Newcastle are said to have bid £5M for center-back Douglas of FC Twente, but with the 24 year-old Brazilian needing to stay in Holland until the end of August to fulfill some requirements from FIFA to play for Holland, that deal is still up in the air.
But we don’t expect Newcastle to waver much from the way they have conducted their transfer business over the last two years, where value for money is by far the number one consideration, and they will simply walk away from deals if they don’t perceive real value in a deal.
And we shouldn’t forget that Newcastle pay all their transfer fees up front so if they bid a million or two less than another club, who stretch the payments over three years – Newcastle still offer the better deal to the selling club.
We are buoyed at missing out on de Jong, only because the lad didn’t want to come to Newcastle, but we’d like to get Debuchy and Douglas in.
And as we’ve mentioned before, if Newcastle can bring one of two 19 year old strikers in – John Guidetti of Manchester City or Luc Castaignos of Inter-Milan – we’d be happy enough, and there was news last week that Newcastle had enquired about Guidetti, so we hope that’s true.
If Newcastle can bring in Debuchy, Douglas and Guidetti we’d be happy enough, but we may still need one or two more top class players through the door, and Newcastle also need to bring in a number of Development players.
18 year-old Bigirimana is one of those, and there’s a very good probability that the highly rated 19 year-old Curtis Good from Melbourne Heart will join Newcastle soon.
Any ideas who else we may need to bring into the first team squad this summer?
Comments welcome.
Note on Malware problem:
I removed one bit of code last night that was causing the malware problem, but when I got up this morning (2:30 am US eastern time) it was still not OK – and after trawling through the site I found the other piece of bad code and have removed it, and requested GOOGLE to retest the site – and I am hopeful we’ll be clean after that test. I am aware of the problem and am working like crazy to fix it.
17 comments so far
Ben3arfa
Jul 10, 2012 at 8:40 AM
Comment #1meh ..
Indian Magpie
Jul 10, 2012 at 8:48 AM
Comment #2Twente and Monchengladbach agree on the fee for De JONG
http://www.fctwente.nu/fotos/fc-twente-nieuws/fc-twente-en-monchengladbac-akkoord.html
ROSHAN MAGPIE
Jul 10, 2012 at 8:50 AM
Comment #3ed you are the man
Markaccus
Jul 10, 2012 at 8:54 AM
Comment #4Papers saying west ham after maiga for 4.5M. I’m sure that name will ring a bell with many here. We were ‘definitely’ getting him last year. #cwarr #bollocks
TorqToon
Jul 10, 2012 at 8:54 AM
Comment #5Rough google translation of the de Jong article
There seems to have come to an end the soap on FC Twente striker Luuk de Jong. According to various sources of FC and Borussia Monchengladbach there almost from the Young and prepare for a transfer to “that Fohlen”.
FC Twente will be in lieu of the 20, 14.5 million to be able to write on the bill. In addition, FC Twente, a number of other options have stipulated as a percentage of sales and as a bonus for Borussia Mönchengladbach the preliminary round of the Champions League survives.
Whether De Jong is still prepared to transfer a percentage of his refrain is still unknown.
GeordieToon89
Jul 10, 2012 at 8:59 AM
Comment #6I really really really really want us to sign John Guidetti!!!
I would also like us to sign Ola Toivenen
GFH
Jul 10, 2012 at 9:01 AM
Comment #7I was really keen at the start of the De Jong saga , but as it became clear he preferred Munchengladbach I cooled my interest. If they don’t choose us we don’t want them , clearly it could work in our favour the other way round with De Buchy saying he does want to play for us!
I’m also glad we didn’t compromise our transfer policy, because other clubs would have been watching to see what we did. 14.5m rising to 20m is far more than I would have wanted to see us pay for De Jong.
S Reb
Jul 10, 2012 at 9:02 AM
Comment #8I really think that our scouting system has given us the confidence that our club is going after the right kind of players. Instead of watching players on youtube – Dennis Wise – we are spending a lot of time watching players in action. We just need to keep the balance right (very young <20 vs young <24) because we don't want to become a feeder-club.
Grafton83
Jul 10, 2012 at 9:02 AM
Comment #9They agreed a fee for 14.5 million euros. I don’t speak any dutch but it looks like that’s what it says. Isn’t that amout £11m of our English pounds which is what we bid wasn’t it?
Oh well he wants to go to Gemany and play for a team with a silly name. Who’s next on the shopping list Graham
JDdubai
Jul 10, 2012 at 9:03 AM
Comment #10we need pace and driblling ability on the left. Last season we mainly attacked down the right with HBA as Ba isnt able to beat a man and create really, need to have balance on the left side as well.
If we had a skillful attacker there and Santon bombing past him we could attack on both sides and give teams a real headache instead of just doubling up on HBA which will happen a lot this season.
Dannyo
Jul 10, 2012 at 9:04 AM
Comment #11Missing out on Luuk, what could we have done really?
We went in with a massive £12 mill, and still got shut down.
I commend the board for their efforts, they really took a big step up on this one, and it still didn’t pay off.
A real shame, but that’s life. Move on to the next target lads.
HullMag6
Jul 10, 2012 at 9:05 AM
Comment #12Toivanen and Guidetti could be bought for less that de jong I think. Let’s get them or get signing someone chaps.
Markaccus
Jul 10, 2012 at 9:08 AM
Comment #13Agree with most on here. They wanted too much for him, just because we’re a prem club. Time foreign clubs realised prem clubs can’t pay huge fees over and over, due to financial fair play rules. Why should we have to pay almost a third more than a german club?
HullMag6
Jul 10, 2012 at 9:18 AM
Comment #14A kick back from the tiote deal mara
TorqToon
Jul 10, 2012 at 9:24 AM
Comment #15I think the 14.5mil offer is one thing….but it seems with add on’s etc it will end up being nearer the 20mil mark which is far too much to pay! Monstermunchback got drawn into a bidding war for this lad and have ended up paying way over the odds! Glad we aren’t like that anymore. Just goes to show however that we have money there to spend if the right player/s are available! Let’s say we still have that 11-12mil to spend…who who u like to see brought in? Forget about Anita and debuchy…as bids have gone in which means that that money is also available in addition to the de Jong bid.
Markaccus
Jul 10, 2012 at 9:25 AM
Comment #16Yeah I suppose, but really its two different players, and they shouldn’t be able to penalise us just because mr t turned out to be great.
Markaccus
Jul 10, 2012 at 9:28 AM
Comment #17Lmao @ Monstermunchback