Speculation around the futures of Bruno Guimaraes and Alexander Isak are a constant source of pain for Newcastle United fans.
It seems that it's almost a daily occurrence when a story comes out linking one or the other with a move away from St James' Park this summer.
It's an easy enough story to produce with both players currently, by far, Newcastle's biggest players in terms of desirability, and the Magpies have had a tough season compared to last and may yet finish the campaign without so much as a place in the Europa Conference League to show for it.
That's the kind of thing that makes it easy to speculate about a player being unsettled and looking to move to a 'bigger' club.
Of course, these journalists purposefully ignore the fact that both Isak and Bruno were sold on the project when they signed at Newcastle, and that project was always set to take five years or so to reach where we did last season.
The fact that this season hasn't been as successful isn't so much a case of the club going backwards, but being pretty much exactly where it should be, and given all of the injuries and setbacks we've faced this season, that's pretty spectacular.
Clearly, the players see that with Harvey Barnes telling TNT Sport ahead of tomorrow's clash with Tottenham that Isak and Bruno are 'fully committed'.
"I think we can see week in and week out the quality they can bring. They’re big players for us and they’ve been consistently good this year which has been important for us.
"I think you can see from playing with them on the training pitch week in and week out that they’re fully committed and happy here. As players, that’s all we can really take from that. They have shown no signs of anything else.
"You want to keep the best players at the club. Until something changes in that aspect we’ll enjoy playing with them and enjoy playing as a team."
PL | GD | PTS | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
Liverpool
|
10 | 13 | 25 |
2 |
Manchester City
|
10 | 10 | 23 |
3 |
Nottingham Forest
|
10 | 7 | 19 |
4 |
Chelsea
|
10 | 8 | 18 |
5 |
Arsenal
|
10 | 6 | 18 |
6 |
Aston Villa
|
10 | 2 | 18 |
7 |
Tottenham Hotspur
|
10 | 11 | 16 |
8 |
Brighton
|
10 | 3 | 16 |
9 |
Bournemouth
|
10 | 1 | 15 |
10 |
Newcastle United
|
10 | 0 | 15 |
11 |
Brentford
|
9 | 0 | 13 |
12 |
Fulham
|
9 | 0 | 12 |
13 |
Manchester United
|
10 | -3 | 12 |
14 |
West Ham United
|
10 | -6 | 11 |
15 |
Leicester
|
10 | -4 | 10 |
16 |
Everton
|
10 | -7 | 9 |
17 |
Crystal Palace
|
10 | -5 | 7 |
18 |
Ipswich
|
10 | -11 | 5 |
19 |
Southampton
|
10 | -12 | 4 |
20 |
Wolves
|
10 | -13 | 3 |