If you remember, in the summer I touted the possibility of a swap deal between Newcastle United and Chelsea, with the Magpies getting Daniel Sturridge and a big chunk of cash in return for having to part with Cheik Tiote. Fast forward a few months and Sturridge is a pretty important part of Chelsea’s set up, but with Michael Essien still on the treatment table, their interest in Tiote hasn’t waned. So, now I’d like to propose a different swap deal, an Ivorian for an Ivorian, Cheik Tiote for Salomon Kalou.
Cue howls of disbelief and Newcastle fans saying “do you mean Salomon Kalou? That Chelsea flop who can’t find the back of the net to save his life? The man who spends more time warming the bench than he does on the pitch?” Yep, he’s the man I’m talking about, but before you write off the 26-year-old, let me tell you why I think it could be a good move and then you can make up your own minds about whether he could resurrect his career at Newcastle.
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Rewind five years and Kalou was one of the hottest prospects in the Dutch league, resulting in Chelsea splashing out just shy of £10 million on him. However, it’s never really quite worked for Salomon at Stamford Bridge. He’s shown flashes of brilliance yes, but those have been few and far between and for an attacking player, his goal record of 1 in 4 isn’t anything to write home about. He has stagnated at Chelsea and wants more first team football, something he could get at Newcastle.
He fits the bill in terms of Newcastle’s transfer policy, being a player who has gone off the boil a bit, but is still young enough to recapture previous form and play at the top for plenty more years. Given Chelsea’s wealth of attacking talent, the Magpies may be able to get him on the cheap, something that can’t be said of Tiote. Due to Newcastle’s position in the table and Tiote’s long-term contract, the Magpies are right where they want to be in any future negotiations and will be able to demand big bucks.
In an ideal world Newcastle would keep hold of Cheik Tiote, but we all know that money talks for Mike Ashley and if he was presented with an offer that was too good to turn down then he’d probably take it. A deal of around £15m and Kalou would probably represent that and with Chelsea in a little bit of disarray, then they’ll be desperate to get their man. That’s a position that Newcastle can take advantage of and if Tiote was to leave at least then there’d be a positive to it as well.
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I’m pretty sure Kalou’s out of contract in the summer. I agree that he could shine here, but why not get him on a pre-contract in January and not have to lose our most important midfielder…
I can understand your reasoning if the player was not from the same league , but he is, and has many years experience playing in the premiership and still fails to make the grade, so i wouldn’t be in a hurry to revert back to the policy of transferring in players that are a spent force or are just not making the grade in the premiership. We’ve been in that boat before, buying the top teams also rans, and i don’t want to ever go down that road again. Keep up the system of buying in players that properly scouted and years of watching have gone into them, caybe, toite, ben arfa, etc etc.
All this speculation about swaps is nonsense. We will not take other club’s players on high wages. As a £10m signing Kalou would be on a big wage at Chelsea, and he won’t want to swap for NUFC money. Selling players and replacing them with cheap new talent is the Newcastle way.
Kalou only cost Chelsea about £3m – the £8m estimate was always wrong. He is not going to get an offer from Chelsea anywhere near what he is on now – they (we) don’t have enough foreign spots to keep him anyway.
Good luck if you want him.
The difference between the two players mentioned is that Mr T is very happy with life on Tyneside. I don’t really think Kalou would like life in the North East after sampling the “delights” of the bright lights of the nations capital London.
As I have said on other sites we will not loose Tiote for anything like £20 Million. It will cost a LOT more to take him away from Newcastle United.
Why so confident?… Well just look at the Lambias “rant” that was recently reporsted. When Liverpool wanted Carroll his response was and I quote “£30 Million … F*** Off and I slammed the phone down”. “Don’t waste my time”.
Then he goes on to tell how they recieved the £35 Million offer and still they only accepted it becasues Mike Ashley demanded that they pay the whole sum upfront….When they missed the due date we charged them 12k interest!
Now comes the infamous line “You guys don’t realise how F****** horrible we can be”….
No way shape or form will Tiote go for anything less than £30-£35Million, I suppose thats one possitive to having a ruthless owner, he is a VERY shrude business man.
Kalou is on £65k a week we only offered Coloccini £40k a week. Tiote Will be sold for about £25million and we Will sign some one from the French league for about £5million. We are just a shop now!
Tiote for Kalou? It’s like swapping a gold chain for a piece of crap. So no thanks!
The Gallowgate Gob? Maybe you should change your name to ‘i know absolutely bot all about football’. Kalou is at best an average PL footballer and to consider swapping somebody as talented and hungry as for him is one of the worst articles I have read in beards!
What the hell is this “rewind 5 years” about?!
The fact is Kalou has been at Chelsea for 5 years, I don’t know his injury record during that time but when he has been fit he hasnt been a first choice player by any means!
We should be building a team around Tiote and Cabaye in my opinion, but if the greedy cockney decides to cash in that’s exactly what he should get… cash, only this time, spend it on player!!!… ones we want, not rejects that aren’t good enough for teams we could be competing with.
We don’t need to sell Tiote so if Chelsea come calling tell them we want Sturridge (plus cash)or the deal’s off. No messing.
If they say no we keep Cheik. No problem.
The ball is well and truly in our court.
By the way I’d rather have Cheik and have Sturridge too but you can’t have everything you want in life, especially with The Controller at the helm.
£10m + Sturridge or no deal
We are in 3rd place because of talent like mr t. sell him and we never going to progress. but our club owners only interested in money i think. how sad. cant take it with you mikey.
In my earlier post i forgot to mention, that in all likely hood this tiote to Chelsea speculation is nothing more than pure an utter shite drummed up by some half arsed sports journalist, so he can fill some space in the back pages of the rag he writes for. There’s always plenty of mileage in a story that involves Newcastle, because as we all know from past experience’s people just love to hear some gossip when it has anything to do with the Black & White part of the northeast.
Well its a non-starter for me, Kalou is an ok striker but not worth our best MF to date, plus the rumours now is that Manc Citey are also interested in Tiote & willing to offer £20m too… so lets see which multi-billionaire is willing to get the man.. I say slap a £40m, no make that £50m release clause on Tiote right now & se who comes looking then… lol lol lol
If nothing else we can be sure that Ashley won’t be taken for a mug. If there is one he knows its the cost of things including his own players so he’ll squeeze every last pound out of the deal.
We just have to hope he then spends some of it on the team!
Tiote is my favorite player, I would be satisfied if we got Sturridge for him. Solves our striker problem which is crucial. We may not get another midfielder like Tiote but he could be replaced. Plus our midfield is pretty good. We cant just rely on Tiote or maybe we have been doing that too much anyway. A decent midfielder is cheaper than a top striker.
What a joke now way would we do this, it would be like david ngog to bolton :L
I think Chelsea are going to be another Arsenal soon anyway, regular top 4 finishers and qualifiers for Champions League but no trophies coz I think Man Utd and City are going to be sharing those between them.
I don’t think Tiote will want to go, he seems genuinely settled and happy to stay at Newcastle, look at how well Modric is doing at Spurs since they fought Chelsea off with an even bigger offer (which I think is firmly in Ashleys mind, £35m offer for Modric) the same money as Carroll and that happened to be Pardews reference.
I hope they do ring and ask and Lambastard tells them to f**k off and slams the phone down… and they don’t ring back like Liverpool did
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