With Mike Ashley having an ownership here at Newcastle that can be best described as a car crash, speculation linking us with players over a certain amount of money is quite righting filed in the propaganda drawer.
The fact that we have a transfer record lying there unbroken throughout Ashley’s eleven-year tenure is a testament to everything he wants out of his association with the club in relation to his sports shop’s ambitions aside from that it’s an embarrassing stigma.
As it is, the £17m we spent on Micheal Owen in the days of Graeme Souness and Freddie Shepherd may have been inflated with wages to be £100m or so all in, in its entirety but that was before the days of getting obscene amounts of premier league money for basically nothing but existing in the division.
Our need for a new striker is no secret and with speculation mounting on Aleksandar Mitrovic heading off to pastures new, this has diverted attention to who we could be replacing him with.
History points to a cheaper alternative but our local paper The Chronicle and Sky Sports have linked us with Nice striker Alassane Pléa, who has an alleged price tag of £27m. Sky also said we had a bid rejected that didn’t meet the French clubs valuation and that is no surprise.
With the likes of West Ham said to be sniffing and interest mounting in the player, hopefully, the scenario of our season ticket renewal deadline isn’t swaying the thoughts of fans falling for the propaganda tricks that have surrounded Ashley here and it has to be actions making our minds up now, not speculation.
With a transfer window with just over a month to play, time is of the essence and that may take a lot more money than ever before.