Rumours of Newcastle’s interest in ‘special’ 21-year-old striker grow, could be clever business

Newcastle United are being heavily linked with another attempt to bring Hugo Ekitike to Tyneside.

It's a story that's gathering pace that Newcastle will approach Paris Saint-Germain in January to loan the striker they stole from under our noses last summer.

The Northern Echo are reporting that it could be a loan with an option to buy for the player once hailed as 'special' by Oscar Garcia. That would make perfect sense.

There's definitely still some ill-feeling towards Ekitike in Newcastle

After the way Hugo Ekitike (or more specifically, his agent) messed Newcastle around before heading to PSG, there will be a lot of fans who won't want him anywhere near our club.

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Stringing the club along, waiting until everything was agreed and then going off to join the French Champions. It stung and it showed a lack of class.

However, if you look at it from his point of view, he was a young lad potentially leaving home to move to an entirely new country, new culture, new language, and then all of a sudden an offer comes in from a team in your home country, a team you've dreamed of playing for. Of course he was going to go there.

Newcastle could really get one over on PSG here

The fact that things haven't worked out for him there is just a little bit of a bonus for us bitter Newcastle fans, but now, we could really rub salt into the PSG wounds by taking him off their hands and developing him into the player we thought he could be.

If we take Ekitke on loan in January and he does enough to earn a permanent deal in the summer, once Eddie Howe gets a pre-season with him and he's got used to life in England, he could become that goal-scoring beast we hoped we were signing over a year ago.

He could follow the Anthony Gordon model. As long as he's given time to settle and has the right attitude (which is the big question for us) he could be amazing next season and just think how much that would stick in PSG's throat.