"Things could move quickly" - Marc Guehi to Newcastle back on the cards?

There’s been a few football transfer speculation stories this week involving Newcastle United which have been maddeningly banal or incredibly wide of the mark – even for speculation.

However, this isn’t one of them. Craig Hope, the Daily Mail’s Northeast football correspondent, has been talking on his YouTube channel about Newcastle’s expected return to the Marc Guehi transfer in the January transfer window. 

Responding to fan questions regarding an update on Guehi, Hope said: “I think we will have our answer within the first week. We won’t have a situation like the summer where Newcastle go in for £40m/50m, then in the last week of January we talk about failed £60m/70m moves”

Hope also added that he doesn’t think “the asking price won’t be anywhere near the £60/65/70m it got to” during the summer and that he “believes that some, and this is information from inside Crystal Palace, that it would’ve made better business sense to sell Guehi in the summer.”

Craig Hope generally has his finger on the pulse of the going’s-on in and around United, breaking several stories during the Bruce era about how much of a clown show it was behind the scenes, and has broken many more accurate stories since.

Guehi will be entering the last 18 months of his contract in January so it’s clearly going to be on the agenda in the boardroom if the player is still Eddie Howe’s first choice. Hope final comments are quite illuminating, he said: 

“There is an acceptance that things could move quickly without the public drama and the farce that was the saga of the summer that never happened. Will they go back for Marc Guehi? It’s definitely on the agenda, I know that much.”

Crystal Palace are, surprisingly after a very decent finish to last season, still winless in the Premier League this season despite hoping for an improved campaign this time around. From the outside Guehi hasn’t looked great but statistically he has trended towards a 7.00 on the notoriously stingy SofaScore.

Interestingly, Guehi’s value on SofaScore is listed at £37m – a value most clubs would be happy to pay for a player of his age, ability and potential ability. With Eddie Howe now set to stay for the foreseeable after England appointed a new manager on Wednesday, Paul Mitchell should attempt to land his top defensive target in January – as long as the price is sensible rather than the dramatically overpriced spectacle of the summer.