Newcastle United look set to lose Jonjo Shelvey to Nottingham Forest, which means we’d ideally need to bring in another midfielder before the transfer window slams shut tomorrow night.
If only there was a player on Newcastle’s radar who could fit the bill. Maybe someone in the East Midlands, maybe named James, who also shares a name with a mermaid from the 1980’s who looked remarkably like Darryl Hannah (let me know if you got that reference).
In all seriousness, of course, James Maddison is the obvious name in the frame here, but Newcastle may yet still be made to wait to make that dream a reality if Leicester are going to continually play hardball.
The signs point towards a deal being close – Leicester have brought in Tete on loan and now it looks like Shelvey is on his way out of Newcastle which you wouldn’t imagine would have been sanctioned were the club not confident of a replacement coming in. Surely?
Howe touched on it during his media briefing this morning: “We will see what we can do in the market to try to bring a player,
“There’s no guarantee on that. With other transfers, we will try and see what we can do. In terms of permanent signings that will be very difficult, we will look at a loan situation but it has to be the right player.” (via The Chronicle).
On the surface, it looks like we’re still shopping, but we’ve seen this before, Eddie Howe doesn’t give anything away until he is 100% confident that something is happening, so we can still keep our fingers crossed that our primary target is inbound.
If not, there are rumours of a loan move for Ruben Loftus-Cheek from Chelsea according HITC, although, as Luke Edwards of The Telegraph states: Getting English clubs to deal with us is going to be hard, especially a “big six” side who now see us rivals.