Are Newcastle after some teenage Wicks?

There are reports today suggesting that Newcastle are looking at making a summer bid for 17-year-old Ipswich striker Connor Wickham.

The report, which is in the News of the World so you can apply liberal amounts of salt to it, claims that a bid could be on the cards as Newcastle try to address the lack of striking options the club has after the sale of Andy Carroll to Liverpool. A fee of £10 million has been mentioned before for the talented youngster.

Wickham has bags of potential, but because of that he is also on the radar of a lot of the bigger clubs. Manchester United and the likes are said to be interested, so if they come calling I wouldn't rate our chances of landing him very highly.

With Wickham the club would be paying the price for potential, which would be great if it worked out in the long run, but it still wouldn't solve our immediate need for a striker who can come in and 'do a job' from the word go.

These rumours have been going round now for quite some time, which leads me to believe that this is just a rehash of an older story. That, combined with the fact that the News of the World is not the most accurate publication makes me sceptical of the validity of this report.

Still, it's worth covering, and there will no doubt be more to come now that everyone knows that we are sitting on a bundle of cash. We may not spend it all, but it won't stop us getting linked with players.

Another player who has been strongly linked with us in the last few days is Gervinho. The Ivory Coast winger will only have 12-months left on his contract in the summer and his current club Lille have already conceded that they are likely to lose him in the summer and have named a price of €10 million. That's Euro's, not pounds.

There will be competition from other clubs for both players, but there is no doubt that either, or both, would dramatically increase the quality of our starting XI. Unlike some other Newcastle blogging sites, I've gotten past the sale of Andy Carroll to the point where I am looking at the future.

If, and it's a big if at the minute, we can get quality players in to play in the positions that we are lacking then we could have a cracking little team, but a lot of that depends on us keeping our better players as it is. Keeping Jose Enrique, Cheik Tiote and Joey Barton is a must in my eyes, and if we can add to them with some quality, plus get Hatem Ben Arfa back to his best, then we could have a good little side.

The summer is going to be interesting, for sure.