According to the Chronicle, Arsenal have shown ‘solid interest’ in Newcastle United goalkeeper Freddie Woodman.
The piece claims that the England U-21 international is now ‘considering his options’, with him making just THREE senior appearances last season and being out of contract next summer.
Woodman has featured in three of our four pre-season friendlies so far, however the club have a big decision to make on his immediate future, with Lee Ryder also reporting that he’s received loan offers from two unnamed Championship sides this week.
Here’s what he said when asked about his future at the club earlier this month, admitting it was ‘difficult’ to comment on in the ‘awkward situation’ he finds himself in:
“It’s difficult for me to say.
“I’ve got a year left on my contract. It’s an awkward situation.
“I just want to keep getting games and minutes and learn as much as I can.”
What couldn’t be clearer to me is that we A) must tie him down to a long-term contract and B) immediately send him out on loan to a decent Championship side to give him some much needed regular game time in a good league.
Martin Dubravka is quite clearly our best goalkeeper at the club and the current no.1, but to let his potential long-term replacement leave (and leave on the cheap) would be criminal – especially when we rarely see such highly-rated talents come through the ranks on Tyneside.
I think it’s an interesting take on Rafa leaving. We have to always look at both sides of the coin. Everywhere RAFA has gone it has ended up wrong and yes I include Liverpool in that. If you do a bit of digging around regarding his time there the bottom line was he had a falling out with the two yanks that owned them them at the time and even though he was saying to the fans he wanted to stay and was sad to leave and all that ****..he in reality had instructed his lawyer to broker the deal for him to leave…Liverpool wanted him to stay … he chose to leave but played along to the fans at the sane time. It rings very similar to what he was doing with Newcastle. It was always something else with these negotiations.. he wanted 3 million more salary to stay- a 50% increase- this much Rafa has already admitted AFTER Ashley exposed this fact. Up until then all he kept saying was it was not about his money blah blah… if not about money why ask for such a crazy pay hike? So anyway , Ashley dis notched not go nuts… he offered him two million a year pay rise… making him on 8 million a year. Then he asked for the training ground improvements… so Ashley tells him 20 million over three years can be spent on the training facilities… and he would put it in the contract. Then he asks for more and more and more… RAFA wanted to reach a dead end in the negotiations. Make no mistake… he was planning on leaving no matter what.
Craig Chisholm(Quote)