Newcastle ‘closely monitoring’ Arsenal benchwarmer as Howe looks to replace £13m favourite
Newcastle United are reportedly considering a summer move for Scotland and Arsenal left-back Kieran Tierney.
Tierney joined the Gunners from Celtic for around £25million in the summer of 2019.
He quickly established himself as the club’s first-choice left-back under Unai Emery but struggled with several injuries in his debut season.
The 25-year-old’s 2021-22 campaign was also cut short after undergoing knee surgery, an injury which played a part in his side missing out on the top four.
After another difficult campaign full of spells on the sideline, Mikel Arteta signed Oleksandr Zinchenko from Manchester City last summer.
The Ukrainian has been Arteta’s first-choice left-back this season, leaving Tierney warming the bench for the majority of the Premier League campaign.
When a player of Tierney’s class is struggling for game time, transfer gossip is expected to come.
Newcastle have been linked in the past, while a report last month said that Aston Villa are keen, despite signing both Lucas Digne and Alex Moreno in the space of a year.
There is also reported interest from Italy, though Tierney openly admitted in the Amazon: All or Nothing docuseries that he was very homesick after swapping Glasgow for London in 2019, so I feel like he would probably not want to move abroad.
Speaking to Arsenal’s official website last month, Tierney discussed living away from home. He said: “It’s not been difficult to stay in touch, but the hardest part is you don’t see each other every day.
“But there will be a phone call every single day, without question. Whether it’s five minutes driving to and from training, whether it’s Facetime when I’m just chilling in the house or I usually phone my mum when I’m taking the dog out for a walk. So it’s every day, religiously.
“We very rarely talk about football. She might ask how training was today but nothing much more than that. Unless I want to talk about something specific then we do, but it’s more just day-to-day stuff, what I’m up to, what I’m having for dinner that night, things like that.”
Newcastle is a fair bit closer to his hometown than north London, and the north east club are interested in signing Tierney, according to Football Insider.
The report states that the Magpies are ‘closely monitoring’ the Scotland international’s situation at the Emirates.
Eddie Howe is eager to sign a new starting left-back at the end of the season despite Dan Burn’s stellar form.
In fact, the report claims that Newcastle want to offer Burn – who joined from Brighton last January – a new contract.
Another left-back the Geordies are interested in is Fulham’s Antonee Robinson, it is said.
Tierney would bring a winning mentality to St James’ Park having won four league titles, two Scottish Cups and two Scottish League Cups with Celtic before helping Arsenal win the FA Cup in 2020.
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