Debuchy bid rejected

Debuchy action hots up Lille have rejected a bid from Newcastle for right-back Mathieu Debuchy according to the French press.

Both French regional La Voix and French national L'Equipe are reporting that a bid of €5 million has been knocked back by Lille chairman Michel Seydoux.

Debuchy is under contract until 2015 at Lille although there has been increasing speculation over the future of the former team-mate of Yohan Cabaye for some time now, especially as the player continues to impress on the international stage with France over the summer. It is believed that Lille are looking at closer to €8 million before agreeing to any deal.

Crudely translated by Google and refined a tiny bit by me, this is what the Lille chairman had to say on the matter.

“Newcastle proposed a fee this week of five million euros for Mathieu Debuchy who is under contract until June 2015," said Seydoux.

He added: “We are not sellers. We did not sign a new contract with Mathieu last year to get one further season. He is part of our plans. He is a man of Lille!”

He may well be a man of Lille for now, but everyone has their price and Newcastle can pay that price up front, in one hit, using cold hard cash which gives us the edge in the transfer market in my opinion, and is part of the reason why we seem to have such a strong bargaining hand in the transfer market these days.

I'm assuming that Newcastle will be going back in with another bid considering the one they just offered was in the region of £4 million. A fee of £5 million would give Lille just over €6 million which, as mentioned before, is likely to be paid in one hit. Would that be enough to tempt them to do a deal? or would they be happy to wait another few years or depending on strings attached to a deal to get the full amount they are said to be looking for?

I don't think we'll see any real movement until after France get knocked out of the European Championships to be honest. It's unlikely any player is going to be allowed to leave his international camp to travel for the necessary formalities like medicals and such whilst the competition is ongoing.

Mind you it does seem that after all this time Newcastle are indeed interested and are willing to bid for the player. Hopefully Yohan Cabaye and Hatem Ben Arfa can have a word in Debuchy's ear and get him to favour a move to us over anything else.

Get to work boys!