It may be three months until the transfer window re-opens, but that doesn’t stop Newcastle United being linked with plenty of new signings. Graham Carr and his scouting team will be casting their nets far and wide as they look to bring the hottest talent from across Europe to the north-east. The latest rumours link Newcastle with players plying their trade in Switzerland, Belgium and Greece, so Carr must be totting up the air miles!
The first name on the list is midfielder Adrian Nikci. 22-year-old Nikci is of Albanian descent and currently plays for FC Zurich in the Swiss Super League, where he’s played close to 100 times over the past half a decade. Born in Sarajevo, Serbia, Nikci is just 1.78 metres tall, and has featured for the Switzerland under-21 side. The murmurings in Italy are that Genoa are interested, but Newcastle would be confident of beating them to the signing of the attacking midfielder.
Then there’s a couple of strikers, one who plays in Belgium and one who’s a Belgium international. Kevin Mirallas (pictured above) is arguably the more well-known player having featured for Belgium more than 20 times and netted four goals for his national side. The 24-year-old used to play in Ligue 1, first for Lille, where he was a teammate of Yohan Cabaye, and then for Saint-Etienne before moving to Olympiacos. Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws is linking Newcastle, Sunderland, Everton and Fulham with Mirallas, so don’t be surprised to see him Premier League-bound in the summer.
The final member of the trio is Anderlecht striker Dieumerci Mbokani. He is the oldest of the three at 26-years-old but still falls within Newcastle’s transfer policy age-wise. Mbokani also has the most impressive international goal scoring record, having netted 10 times in 20 appearances for DR Congo. Once again Fulham are being linked with Mbokani, while Liverpool are also thought to be interested in the 6ft 1in striker.
Whether Newcastle actually make firm moves for either Nikci, Mirallas or Mbokani in the summer remains to be seen, but expect the Toon to be linked with plenty of players between now and then. If anyone has seen any of the trio in action then please post your thoughts below…
Great names. If we were to get them all I look forward to seeing just how many different spellings we see of these names having witnessed the numerous distortions of names like Hughton, Pardew and Ben Arfa.
Oh come on it’s a joke!