Tiote: “I can achieve what I want to here"

Cheik Tiote has moved to distance himself away from a move away from St James' Park by declaring that he can achieve everything he wants to achieve here at Newcastle United.

Tiote has been the subject of intense transfer speculation for the last 18 months or so, yet the Ivory Coast international has always maintained that he is happy at NUFC and would like to stay. After all, he was happy enough to commit to a six year contract just over twelve months ago which does say something about his commitment.

However his performances will not have gone unnoticed, and we are well aware these days that money talks. It will have to be significant money though if Tiote does move one, thanks to that long term contract, which will then get reinvested into the team and be used to make the squad stronger and so on and so forth.

Ideally it's not the way I want to do things - we should be looking to add to what we've got rather than replace and build again, but it is a rather handy backup plan should we have to use it, however it does look, at least for now, that Tiote has no desire to leave the Toon!

“I can achieve what I want to here," he told the Daily Star. “I don’t know about all the speculation, but we have four games to play and I have to focus on them. After the season ends, we will see what happens.”

I'm not entirely sure on the last bit of that mind, but then again at least he isn't building up false hope or anything like that, or saying he loves the club, or saying that he is living the dream like a certain former Newcastle United player used to say.

In a way it's partly due to Andy Carroll that I now have no expectations from any player to stay at any club. Perhaps I was naive to believe Carroll's spiel, what with him being a local lad and everything else, but as I said earlier, I guess money talks and I wouldn't be surprised if it was any different for any of our players no matter how highly we revere them.

So will he stay or will he go?