Newcastle United looked to have the deal for Fulham's Tosin Adarabioyo all tied up last week until Chelsea entered the race.
Since Chelsea's interest became public knowledge, the 'done deal' was suddenly nowhere near complete leaving Newcastle fans a bit worried about what is going on.
Chelsea have a few advantages over Newcastle when it comes to this one - they're in Europe next season, albeit the Europa Conference League, it's still more than Newcastle are currently offering, and, perhaps more importantly in this instance, they're a London club which is more convenient for a player already based in London.
However, the Newcastle project looks more exciting, the club seems more stable - I mean, why on earth did they sack Mauricio Pochettino after one season after he finally got them playing like a team?
Transfer guru Fabrizio Romano has given a bit more insight into where he thinks Tosin will end up when speaking on The Debrief podcast.
“First of all it’s an open situation. I still see Newcastle as favourites because Newcastle started to work on this deal in March. For Tosin there is still discussions ongoing but I see Newcastle as favourites.
“Interest from Chelsea has been there since the final week of March, Chelsea are well informed on Tosin.
“I’m not aware of anything advanced with Chelsea. I’m not sure anything is decided with Chelsea, I think the situation is still quite open with Newcastle pushing to make it happen.”
So it seems like Newcastle are still in the driver's seat but it's far from a done deal and Chelsea still have a shot of hijacking the deal. Great.
It's surely just an incentive for Newcastle to push to get the deal done ASAP. It's unlikely that anything would be announced while Tosin is still under contract at Fulham anyway and his contract doesn't expire until the end of June.
We could be in for an anxious wait.
PL | GD | PTS | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
Liverpool
|
14 | 18 | 35 |
2 |
Chelsea
|
15 | 17 | 31 |
3 |
Arsenal
|
15 | 14 | 29 |
4 |
Manchester City
|
15 | 6 | 27 |
5 |
Nottingham Forest
|
15 | 1 | 25 |
6 |
Aston Villa
|
15 | 0 | 25 |
7 |
Brighton
|
15 | 3 | 24 |
8 |
Bournemouth
|
15 | 3 | 24 |
9 |
Brentford
|
15 | 3 | 23 |
10 |
Fulham
|
15 | 2 | 23 |
11 |
Tottenham Hotspur
|
15 | 12 | 20 |
12 |
Newcastle United
|
15 | -2 | 20 |
13 |
Manchester United
|
15 | 1 | 19 |
14 |
West Ham United
|
15 | -9 | 16 |
15 |
Everton
|
14 | -7 | 14 |
16 |
Leicester
|
15 | -9 | 14 |
17 |
Crystal Palace
|
15 | -6 | 13 |
18 |
Wolves
|
15 | -14 | 10 |
19 |
Ipswich
|
15 | -13 | 9 |
20 |
Southampton
|
15 | -20 | 5 |