Newcastle United will listen to realistic transfer offers for striker Dwight Gayle in January, according to The Chronicle.
The newspaper claims that, despite Magpies head coach Steve Bruce wanting to utilise the 29-year-old, the club are open to offers come the winter transfer window.
The report states that the Englishman was at West Bromwich Albion last season on a season-long loan with an option for the Baggies to sign him permanently had they been promoted.
However, that didn’t come to pass, and Gayle turned down another loan back to The Hawthorns last summer as he looked to establish some certainty regarding his career.
OPINION
This is an interesting one, isn’t it? The idea of Newcastle selling any strikers when they have only scored five goals in nine Premier League games seems faintly bizarre. Gayle is arguably the team’s most natural goalscorer, certainly so when you consider the struggles of Joelinton, Yoshinori Muto and the lack of prolificness evident in Andy Carroll’s career to date. It’s clear that there will once again be interest in Gayle come January, as there was last summer. He’s a very attractive potential signing for any Championship side, and probably for a couple of top flight teams as well. However, it would surely be madness for Newcastle to sell him before the end of the campaign, unless they had a ready-made replacement – an upgrade, at that – ready to join the club. Otherwise it would simply make no sense to get rid of him while their goalscoring struggles continue. Still, we’ll have to wait a couple of months to see how this one shakes out.