Pardew keeping tabs on Shane Long?

Transfer gossip has been fairly relentless over the last week or so.

From £35 million bids for German internationals to stories of scrabbling around in the free transfer bin, NUFC have been linked with them all, plus some more to boot! Some of them have been purely laughable, like the Mario Gomez rumour, some of them have unpopular, like the Cheikh M'Bengue rumour, whilst some of them have stoked up random interest from certain supporters.

This latest rumour falls in the last category for me personally as I really rate the lad who we have been linked with. Shane Long has apparently caught the eye of Alan Pardew who was at the Republic of Ireland v Macedonia game and is considering making a bid for the 24-year-old in the summer.

Long has scored 20 goals in 43 appearances so far this season and earned praise for his recent international performances against Macedonia and Uruguay from ROI boss Giovanni Trapattoni.

Personally I feel that he is one of the better players outside of the Premier League. It's random I know, but I think he could actually do a job for us. Granted his goal return hasn't been great in seasons gone by, but then it's also worth bearing in mind that the majority of his time has been spent appearing from the bench.

I don't think Long would have any problem dealing with the physical nature of the Premier League either. In his younger days he used to play Hurling and is in fact the only player to have played international football and Hurling at Croke Park. If you don't know what Hurling is then have a look on Youtube. You'll see that it a game where men beat each other with sticks mainly. It's pretty intense and involves having a screw loose somewhere.

It's probably more paper talk to be honest, but I really wouldn't mind seeing Long join the ranks at St James' Park. I see him as a strong yet nippy striker who works hard for the team, which is a good thing in my book and is something that we seem to be lacking at the moment. The fact that he would command a reasonable fee and reasonable wages is a bonus.

I know a lot of people will probably disagree with me on this, but I think he would give us another option and would improve the quality of our strike-force.

What do you think?