Sauces say the papers will report a £12m bid tomorrow. Can't see Newcastle selling to a direct rival for that kind of money
Agreed. Llambias (their CEO) is a fearsomely effective negotiator, there is no way we'll gt him for less than 20 million IMO.
We're better off going for Cabaye, he's a better player, and would play a bigger part in our team, he can play in a double pivot with Arteta, similar to the Khedira/Alonso partnership fro Real Madrid, plus the added comfort that Cazorla will chase back, effectively nullifying the need for a pure DM.
A few other sauces claiming there was an inquiry about Cabaye but that ended when Cazorla became available
We'd still have the Llambias problem though. The man really does make people pay silly money for NUFC players.
Yeah, that's a problem as you said. Who knows though, we could have some concrete interest, and Cabaye could easily have his head turned and push through a move.
Am I the only one that thinks another midfielder isn't a necessity but just more competition? I really don't get how losing out on one player suddenly makes this a bad transfer window!? I look at our squad and I see the most quality depth in our squad since forever... In fact despite the better first 11 I don't think we had better competition for places even when we were winning titles. please log in to view this image
If Wilshere was fit and ready, i'd be happy with the current squad, but i think an extra midfielder wouldn't go amiss. Couldn't we loan someone for 3 weeks?
There's quite a few viable options... -I like Cabaye too but again he's not exactly a holding player. -Same goes for Feillani who I think will cost a small fortune to prize away from Everton (20 Mill?) as he's extremely important to that team. -Biglia looks to be going to Norwich(*?) -I dont think Capoue is technically skilled enough to fit into our midfield. -Tiote is decent but I think he would be a slight downgrade on Song. I would prefer Hernandez, M'Vila or Nigel De Jong.
At the end of last season, most of us said we needed another right back, another defensive midfielder, a striker and possibly back-up/competition for Sczesz. We've signed some fantastic players but they're not necessarily in the positions we needed. If Sagna gets another injury, we have Jenkinson or have to shoe-horn a youngster. We've signed Giroud and Podolski for goals but in the process, gotten rid of RVP. Even before Song had gone, we were all talking about M'Vila and steadying the ship. Now Song has gone, it's surely a priority to get somebody to fill that hole. This summer feels like we've taken two steps back and then one forward. By selling key players, we've created additional problems to the one's we already had.
Yeah he must be. They just bought Rodwell. So he's effectively fighting for a starting place with Barry, Rodwell and Yaya Toure. I think he'd be an excellent option. (and considerably cheaper than some of the other dm's we are linked to) Just hope Wenger considers him.
I've never understood why Mancini starts Barry over De Jong. De Jong is better, more mobile, and more tenacious.
I think left-back was a bigger issue for us, but we should be ok with fullbacks this season. We lost our best striker, but we certainly have a better variety of strikers this season. Song is (IMO) solid defensively, but he never was asked to play a classic DM role, so not much has changed there.
And of course we improved in the offensive midfielder front. We got REALLY lucky with Rosicky hitting form last season, but even then he had games where he looked unable to keep up for 90 mins.
