22-year-old linked with imminent £34m move to Newcastle now headed to USA for pre-season
Newcastle United's frustrating approach to transfer business has now seen their primary target jet off to the USA.
Reports have been suggesting that talks were ongoing and progressing well between Newcastle and AC Milan over their young centre-back Malick Thiaw, with the move being 'imminent' for the past fortnight.
Given that Thiaw is part of Paulo Fonseca's squad of players who have gone off to the USA for a pre-season tour, that would suggest that things aren't as advanced as journalists would have us believe.
Meanwhile, Martin Hardy of The Times has given a reason as to why things may be progressing slower than we were initially led to believe.
Thiaw is going to be so far behind where he needs to be by the time he arrives
By now we're all pretty much aware that AC Milan have set a fee of €40million (£34million) for Thiaw, and yet despite this, Newcastle have apparently offered closer to £25million.
This penny-pinching approach to buying players is costing us massively in this, and indeed other transfer windows.
Even if we eventually negotiate some kind of drop in price for Thiaw, which is unlikely, by the time we get him through the doors at St James' Park he's going to be way behind the other players in terms of being Howe Fit.
PSR paranoia is causing Newcastle to fall behind
We're still confident that Newcastle will sign Thiaw when they stop being so stubborn, but he could have been heading off to Japan with his new side if we'd just got our finger out.
It begs the question, what other deals have we missed out on because of this insistence that we never pay the asking price for anyone?
We understand it's a business, and with PSR we have to be super careful, but this is just winding us up now.
