Reports have emerged today in France that Newcastle are interested in signing Zenit St Petersburg’s Brazilian forward, Malcom.
Foot Mercato claim that the Brazilian has been offered to Paris Saint-Germain but Newcastle have been alerted to his availability and are interested in bringing the left-sided winger to St James’ Park.
The 25-year-old is primarily a left-sided forward but can play down the right which is perfect for Eddie Howe as he loves to play with inverted wingers.
Malcom caught the eye of the big guns back when he played for Bordeaux where he was brought in to replace Wahbi Khazri who’d just moved to some team called Sunderland. His form there earned him a €41m move to Catalan giants, Barcelona, however, it didn’t really work out for him in Spain as he only made 15 appearances, scoring one goal in year he spent there.
Barcelona were still able to recoup most of their outgoings on Malcom as Zenit forked out €40m in 2018 to take the Brazilian to Russia. He has gone on to make 74 appearances for Zenit, scoring 27 goals. This season he has 12 goals in just 17 appearances according to Transfermarkt.
I absolutely have to share this tweet from the parody Dan Ashworth twitter account regarding the Malcom rumour.
Incorrect.
Also, last time I checked he wasn’t a winger.
Malcom was in the middle.#NUFC https://t.co/p4nU115xLQ
— Dan Ashworth (@D__Ashworth) January 26, 2023
This looks like it would be an excellent signing for Newcastle as it definitely feels like teams have worked out how to stifle our attack lately. Malcom could unlock those defences while he is an unknown entity in the Premier League allowing Newcastle to regain their goalscoring touch.
I’m sure he’d be a more welcome purchase than Anthony Gordon who doesn’t seem to be doing anything to endear himself to the Toon Army with his behaviour at Everton.