Newcastle transfer: Ex-Man City star has ‘no intention of accepting’ the Magpies’ ‘attractive offer’
Newcastle United have suffered a blow to their hopes of signing Barcelona forward Ferran Torres this summer, according to reports.
The Magpies have made five signings so far this summer with Lewis Hall, Odysseas Vlachodimos, Will Osula, Lloyd Kelly and John Ruddy all completing moves to St James’ Park, while Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh are the two players who have left the club for fees over the summer.
And Eddie Howe and his recruitment team are desperately trying to bring in new faces to improve their starting line-up ahead of the transfer deadline.
Former Manchester City forward Torres is believed to be on their list of targets with a report in Football Insider on Sunday claiming that Newcastle have prepared an ‘attractive offer’ for the Spain international.
The same report insisted that Torres was ‘willing to fight’ for his place at Barcelona and was not ‘overly fussed’ about a return to the Premier League.
And now reports in Spain (via Sport Witness) have claimed that Barcelona are ‘willing to listen to offers’ for Torres with the Catalan giants looking for offers of around €30m to sell him.
But Spanish publication Marca insist that Torres ‘does not want to know’ about interest from Newcastle and is looking to stay at the Camp Nou.
Marca claim:
‘The attacker’s entourage denies having received any proposal, neither official nor unofficial, from Newcastle, as some English media reported yesterday. If it materialises in the next few days, the international has no intention of accepting it.’
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Newcastle scrapped their way to a 1-0 win against the promoted Southampton at St James’ Park on Saturday despite playing with 10 men for 62 minutes after defender Fabian Schar was sent off.
Asked afterwards if they could take that into the remainder of the campaign, head coach Howe, who hinted that the club could appeal against the red card, said: “I think we have to.
“We have to grab that sentiment because the season we finished fourth, we had that running through us. We were written off, we were criticised, we were… you name it, there was a lot of stuff thrown at us.
“Of course then when you’re successful, a lot of plaudits come and that’s dangerous sometimes. I’m not saying you want criticism, but you want to feel like you’re fighting against the odds.
“I’ll certainly take that mindset from today because we were against the odds, we were fighting to try to get something from the game and the players did that magnificently.”
On the red card, Howe added: “I think it’s really harsh on Fabi, but I think we all know that you can’t give the referee the possibility to even give the red card, so that’s something we’ll learn from.”
