What £20m Newcastle man was told this summer as exit rumours persisted until deadline day

Imagine joining a new club for a pretty hefty fee and then having them immediately try and find a new club for you to go to.

That's essentially what happened to Newcastle's £20 million summer signing Odysseas Vlachodimos who arrived as part of the deal taking Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest for £35 million.

The 30-year-old Greek international goalkeeper has a wealth of experience, trophies coming out of his ears and a whole bunch of pedigree and yet, Nottingham Forest replaced him with one of the worst goalkeepers to ever wear a Newcastle shirt in Matz Sels and then somehow managed to sell him to us for twice as much as we paid for Nick Pope.

The Athletic have done a superb piece about the strange case of Odysseas Vlachodimos which goes into a tonne of detail about the player and the circumstances behind his arrival at Newcastle, and we just hope the poor bloke doesn't read it.

It feels like Mark Gillespie has more chance of making a Newcastle appearance than Vlachodimos

Vlachodimos' move to Newcastle was handled by club officials which didn't include Eddie Howe (this was before the arrival of Paul Mitchell), and while the club had already agreed to bring in John Ruddy who had just left Birmingham City, said officials were putting together this ridiculous deal for the man who is now known as "Ody".

It was still thought at that point that Martin Dubravka would move on during the summer, which ultimately didn't happen leaving Eddie Howe with five goalkeepers.

As everyone tried to make sense of things, it was expected that Ody would become number 2 and Dubravka would be pushed down to third choice, however it seems that Ody is at least fourth choice with John Ruddy being spotted on the bench a couple of times this season where Ody was nowhere to be seen.

In fact, when Martin Dubravka was ill heading into the game against Bournemouth, youngster Max Thompson was taken to the south coast as a third-choice option, so really, he's not even fourth choice.

And we wonder why Paul Mitchell said our transfer strategy wasn't fit for purpose

Newcastle tried to find a loan move for Ody shortly after he arrived after being told he wasn't likely to play for the first team this season, however, Ody's family had just settled in the area and he refused to move.

We've always thought that the goalkeeper situation that the club got itself into was a shambles, but it seems even worse than we thought.

The club has spent £20 million a player that nobody wanted, that Eddie Howe has no intention of using, even turning to a fossil and an embryo ahead of the 'keeper with 32 Champions League games on his CV.

What a mess.