Sky Italy’s Gianluca Di Marzio has revealed that Newcastle failed with a £51m bid for Theo Hernandez and did attempt to sign Nicolo Barella before landing Sandro Tonali instead.
In what could’ve been a mini raid of AC Milan, he claims that we attempted to sign Tonali’s former teammate Theo Hernandez, but our offer of £51m (€60m) for the France international left-back was considered too low.
A few weeks ago, the news broke that we were very interested in Barella as a statement signing, but the midfielder was reluctant to leave Inter Milan.
The Italian giants also did not want to part ways with their star man or feel like they had to sell, so this was always going to be a difficult deal to get done for the Magpies.
As Di Marzio suggests, we’ve often landed our top targets since new owners came in – Harvey Barnes is named as the latest player on Howe’s wishlist – but it seems moves for Hernandez and Barella proved to be too much.
Here’s what the Italian journalist had to say when speaking to wettfreunde.net:
“I know that Newcastle want Harvey Barnes and when Newcastle wants a player, they will get him. It’s difficult to imagine that they won’t get the player they want.
“They definitely have the resources to convince the player. They want Harvey Barnes and with their way of working they are getting the players they want.
“The only one they didn’t manage to get was Nicolo Barella but Barella doesn’t want to leave Inter and they don’t want to sell him so it was a difficult deal to make.
“They tried to get Theo Hernandez too but they only offered €60 million (£51m) and AC Milan said no. But Newcastle are capable of raising offers if they really want the player and they can offer a very high salary as well.
“Newcastle could become the new Manchester City in the Premier League’s market but they don’t want to exaggerate and do more than they need.”
