Santon price set at £10m

http://whatculture.com/sport/davide-santon-can-leave-newcastle-10-million.php?

Newcastle have slapped a £10 million price tag on full-back Davide Santon as rumours of big clubs in his native Italy being interested in his signature persist. The Sunday Express report that the one link that won’t go away is Roma with boss Rudi Garcia said to be impressed by Santon’s versatility, intrigued by his ability to play on either flank. AC Milan are also said to be monitoring the situation regarding the former Inter youngster.

Santon made 27 starts for The Magpies last season but Alan Pardew seemingly lost faith in his defensive contributions as the season wore on, beginning by substituting him first when things weren’t going well and then relegating him to the bench in favour of Paul Dummett and Massadio Haidara. Injuries didn’t help either in the final third of the campaign.

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Still only 23, Santon has so much potential and should be seen as one of our biggest assets. He is reminiscent of Gareth Bale during his early time at Tottenham in so much that he’s simply not being played to his strengths. He’s not a defender. That should be obvious to anyone who has watched his time at Newcastle. The weakest aspect of Santon’s game is he defending when the positives of him is his pace and marauding spirit in going forward. He can skip past players for fun and without the shackles of worrying about trying to defend, he could become a major threat in the final third of the pitch if he was just played in a more natural position on the wings.

It is true his final product is too often lacking but with dedicated time on the training ground on his distribution and being switched to midfield next season, I believe it would result in the same kind of impact that helped Bale become a giant at Spurs after question marks over his ability. Davide Santon is no more a full-back than Gareth Bale was.

With that switch Santon could easily become a dominant force at Newcastle for the next ten years. The move particularly makes sense with the emergence of a real athlete in Haidara who at just 20-years-old looks a real prospect at left-back and should definitely start the campaign in that position next season and not Dummett or Santon. Santon should be a winger, either on the left or right flank.

Despite his obvious talent, there’s been a feeling on Tyneside that Newcastle don’t rate Santon too highly. It’s a huge shame as he genuinely feels settled on Tyneside with his Geordie girlfriend, with whom he has just had a child with and his desire to stay despite interest from major European clubs back home. Let’s not forget this is a talent who Jose Mourinho really admired at Inter Milan where Santon won both the Serie A and the Champions League when he was a teenager and he actually seems to enjoy Newcastle and isn’t looking to leave at the first sniff of interest elsewhere.

Mourinho is quoted as saying about our Italian;

“Whenever I find someone who has everything to become a top player and stay in the first team I’ve never held back in giving them a chance. “I’m talking about Davide Santon who is now at Newcastle. “Santon has suffered two great misfortunes. “However, at 17-years-old everybody was saying that he would become for Inter what Paolo Maldini was for AC Milan.”

The misfortunes that Mourinho speak is the knee injury that halted his rapid rise to the first team at Inter and that ultimately led to him losing his place and becoming available for transfer, with Newcastle astutely picking him up for £5.5 million in 2011. He’s worth double that now and his much potential much more so and making sure he is still in our squad come the end of the the next transfer window seems imperative.

 

10m is difficult to turn down. That said there is undoubtedly talent there, he does have potential as a wide man, and there is a nagging worry he'll go on and blossom at a later stage. Difficult one. One thing for sure, he won't be top class as a full back, he is not blessed with the required mentality.

 

For ****s sake. The guy is ****. He might work well in another league, but he's not right for the PL. Going forward he's ok but he can't cross. He's only decent cutting in and shooting. He's not good enough to be a fullback, and we should look for better as a winger threat.

If we could get 4-5m then that would be good enough.

 

FCUK it lets keep him to cover krul when he is injured as that will be a other position he is gash at.
Right midfields should play right midfield simple stuff

 

I agree he looks better further forward and it's beyond me as to why people in Italy were comparing him to Maldini!

He's not a natural defender and if we do keep him, then Pardew should look at a more advanced role. (ham & cheese rather than just ham)

 

Your fundamentally wrong

 

You're*

 

The ****s hitting the fan after the floods

 

Would you expect Pardew if he is given 10 million to spend look for someone of Santon's standard ?

 

Ashley Mathematics will go something like this...

£10m comes in....
£6m goes to Ashley
£2m on a transfer fee for a lesser player
£2m on wages for lesser player (completely forgetting about SAntons wages)
Repeat.

 

Why is he worth 10 mio? How is he better than say Tony Hibbert?

I'd rather sign Hibbert on a free and put the 5-6 mio we get into a strike force, like Ba and Long.

 

I personally like Santon. I don't think he's as bad as many of us make out, but maybe I am just attracted by his modern hairstyles and fancy name.

I think he's a left winger. He likes to cut in, isn't the best defender you'll ever see. He's very much a modern winger, in the sense of he likes the left flank but is right footed. Denis Irwin was a right footed leftback, but was about defending first.

Personally I just don't think we know where we are as a club. If we have a style, it's "work hard/track back", with very little else. Hence why the likes of Gouffran keep playing, 'cos he's a "trier". If we actually bothered to implement some kind of style, some kind of formation that works for the players we have, we might see the best out of players like Santon. Either a wing back role or wide left of a midfield 5 would suit Santon, could also suit Sammy Ameobi, doesn't really suit Le Gouff. Le Gouff is probably more of a left side of a front 3, where Remy was successful, with a pivotal CF up top (which we don't have). As we don't have this leading CF, it follows that we can't see the best of Gouff, but he's in the team meaning Santon's a left back with no protection so he too looks cr@p.

 

You have to have the strikers as Liverpool do who will pound in the goals otherwise at the other end as Liverpool have shown you will leak goals with a less defensive set up, Keegan used to play this way as he only worried about attacking, his mantra was very much we will score more goals than you, no surprise that Rodgers blew it like Keegan cause his team couldn't close out a game, I read that they pissed off the Crystal Palace players by running back with the ball after they scored as if they were gonna score 10 or more and this led to CP coming back at them. It's all about balance, you need to have a set up whereby the team are good going forwards but will also defend from the front as well, getting this right is very difficult and having the players who can manage this on the pitch is also a difficult balance.

 

I'm sure it helps having Luis Suarez, but isn't the Liverpool gameplan built on a philosophy rather than an individual? Did Liverpool's results really suffer without Suarez or Sturridge, or did they keep going with their identity whether they used Suarez or Aspas?!

I just don't get the feeling anyone at NUFC - fans and players alike - has a clue how we're supposed to play. The only conclusion I can draw is that we train to stop the opposition. In the first half of the season, the less able players could do this job knowing that they could then just pass it to Cabaye or Remy. Once we lost any creative/trustworthy ball players, all we could do was try and stop the opposition, there was then no game-plan to get up the field and do something to them. It's hugely limited and exposes your team. Opposition to Newcastle know they just have to pass quickly - Pardew's so obsessed with second guessing what the opposition will do that if he's wrong there's nowhere to turn. I'd much rather we just started every game in a similar vain. Whether that's about sitting deep and breaking at pace, or whether it's a high-pressing game, or whether it's a direct game (god help us), it would be better for everyone if we just knew what to do.

What do we have? A mish-mash of bargain players who can't do the jobs they were bought for. Sissoko's right midfield, in Pards' mind, so as he's a regular starter we immediately have to play at least 4 across the middle. Even against Liverpool, when we tried wingbacks, Sissoko was right mid so it became 5-4-1, rather than 3-5-2. It's a guessing game as to whether this is Pardew's fault (as in, he doesn't even know what he wants or how to play), Carr's fault (scouted Sissoko as a CM, but he can't cut it there in the PL) or Ashley's fault (Pards wants Gomis, Carr wants Gomis, Ashley won't spend £2m on agents fees). But what remains clear throughout is that we just do not have a style of play. Is it really more complicated than just saying "I want a high-pressing 4-4-2, but to do it I need 3 players"? I can't believe it is.

 

The Shoe is 10x the defender that Santon is, he's utter mince

 

Please stop comparing him to Gareth Bale. Bale has world-class pace akin to that of a sprinter, and that alone sets him apart from any other player out there. Santon doesn't have that and will never be that kind of penetrative attacker.