Newcastle United were all set to sign Tosin Adarabioyo this summer before the former Fulham man did a U-turn and signed for Chelsea.
Chelsea have often been a thorn in Newcastle's side when it comes to the transfer market with players often choosing to join the 40 strong army of players over the reality of actually playing regular football.
As fans it's baffling to us why anyone would choose to go to Chelsea at the moment. They change manager every season, their squad is overly bloated and clearly unsustainable, the competition for places must be insane, and they are miles away from the club they used to be.
It turns out that one of the reasons players are opting for Chelsea over Newcastle is former England winger Raheem Sterling.
In a deep dive into Raheem Sterling's fallout at Chelsea the Daily Mail reveals that Sterling called his former Manchester City teammate Tosin to convince him to join Chelsea over Newcastle.
However, what was really interesting was that came as part of a very ambiguously-worded paragraph that suggests Adaraibioyo isn't the first player he's convinced to join the Blues over the Magpies.
"In June, Sterling spoke to former City team-mate Tosin Adarabioyo to convince him to reject Newcastle’s advances and sign for Chelsea. He’d made the same phone call to Cole Palmer 12 months earlier. From Sterling’s perspective he remained central to Chelsea’s operation in every which way."
We are really hoping that it's just a badly written sentence and that it meant that Sterling called Palmer to convince him to join Chelsea, not that Sterling called Palmer to convince him to join Chelsea over Newcastle.
It would be horrendous to think that we could have had Cole Palmer blasting down our right wing now instead of Miguel Almiron or Jacob Murphy.
Palmer was only out-scored by Erling Haaland last season, and having him alongside Alexander Isak and Anthony Gordon would have been devastating.
We're sure it's just a poorly worded paragraph, but it got us all wondering what could have been.
PL | GD | PTS | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
Manchester City
|
3 | 7 | 9 |
2 |
Liverpool
|
3 | 7 | 9 |
3 |
Brighton
|
3 | 4 | 7 |
4 |
Arsenal
|
3 | 4 | 7 |
5 |
Newcastle United
|
3 | 2 | 7 |
6 |
Brentford
|
3 | 1 | 6 |
7 |
Aston Villa
|
3 | 0 | 6 |
8 |
Bournemouth
|
3 | 1 | 5 |
9 |
Nottingham Forest
|
3 | 1 | 5 |
10 |
Tottenham Hotspur
|
3 | 3 | 4 |
11 |
Chelsea
|
3 | 2 | 4 |
12 |
Fulham
|
3 | 0 | 4 |
13 |
West Ham United
|
3 | -1 | 3 |
14 |
Manchester United
|
3 | -3 | 3 |
15 |
Leicester
|
3 | -2 | 1 |
16 |
Crystal Palace
|
3 | -3 | 1 |
17 |
Ipswich
|
3 | -5 | 1 |
18 |
Wolves
|
3 | -6 | 1 |
19 |
Southampton
|
3 | -4 | 0 |
20 |
Everton
|
3 | -8 | 0 |