Newcastle fear their hopes of holding onto Salamon Rondon permanently after his loan spell at the club last season will be wrecked by the Hammers.
ClaretandHugh has learned that although we believed him to be a free signing, for which we apologise, a buy out clause is involved and has been set by West Brom in the wake of their Championship play off defeat by Aston Villa.
Both he and Alexsander Mitrovic remain targets and Rondon has been on the Hammers list for several months.
Manuel Pellegrini signed the player to Malaga during his spell at the club and is keen to be reunited with the 29 year old although Newcastle are also keen to stitch up a deal.
Rondon scored 11 times in the Premier League last season – the same as Mirtovic – but his previous experience of working with the Hammers boss may be giving him the edge over the Fulham striker who at 24 is expected to cost inthe region of £22 million.
According to the Northern Echo “Pellegrini has instructed West Ham’s recruitment team to pursue Rondon” which would take adavantage of uncertainty over manager Rafa Benitez’s position at the club.
Newcastle will not be making any signings until Benitez’s future is resolved one way or the other, so it remains to be seen what Rondon will do if he is offered a move to the London Stadium in the next few days.
The Hammers are not alone in their pursuit of the Venezualan with Wolves also keen to do a deal.
This one comes down to price as he’s getting on towards 30. It’s so hard to judge transfer figures nowadays as they all seem out of hand. In the past, you wouldn’t pay more than 7-10m for a 30 year old. Now you have to pay twice that much. I guess it could be argued that the rewards are so big now that the transfers are still proportional. If he is the missing piece that can get us 6th or 7th for the next 3 years, you’d have to say 15m would be worth it. I hope it doesn’t cost more than that and I hope the vast majority of our new signings are under 25. Seeing far too many 28 year olds linked.
Top thoughts there Dom 🙂 May blog along those lines using you as a source if ur ok with that?
Absolutely fine 🙂
I can’t be the only one who sees these two players as only being a sideways move & imho won’t do anything to improve us.
I seem to read reports that we are on the verge of signing so & so only for a couple of days later another report saying we have little or no chance. Everybody knew the score concerning the Gomez fee & we were all led to believe that wasn’t a problem. Now it’s a reality & suddenly it’s too much.
Last summer’s spend now seems to have been a one off brain fart by SuGo & we have now returned to script. depending on which story you read, we are again looking at the free signing market. A budget of £30m+ player sales? We would have to sell half the squad to get to a point of spending power. Who have we got that we are willing to sell that will bring in any decent amount?
All that next level talk was just that, talk. The time is ‘#### or get off the pot’, I wonder what will happen next.
Totally agree waste of time ..
Please no not Rondon this is a bad bad move , he is not going to improve us . In fact he is the worse striker we are linked with , he is not next level are we Abu g a laugh . Gomez should be persued we haven’t even tried , than Marega, than Mitrovic but certainly not Rondon not good enough. I’m so fed up with going for the cheapest option every time . This does not scream ambition !
Huge, huge mistake. I just don’t get why we’d fling £16.5M at a rapidly approaching 30 year old striker, who’ll have zero sell on value and has never scored more than 14 goals a season in his life – and he’s only done that once, about 8 years ago. He averages 8.75 goals a season in the PL. Next level huh? Just what we need eh? Not being funny, we could keep (and start) Perez and he’d score 10.
So this is the best we can hope for .Jesus here we go again…this new stadium move is really bringing in the high calibre players they all promised 😂😂😂😂😂👌👌
I don’t know much about Gomez but by all accounts if we are going to the next level it is him we should buy. In relation to the Rondon and Mitrovic, its a very simple decision, it has to be Rondon. Anyone who thinks otherwise should speak to Newcastle fans. Mitrovic was a failure in Newcastle but Rondon was the complete opposite.