Two more young players have been linked with moves to Newcastle in January – Chelsea’s Reece James and Scottish talent Reagan Thompson.
The most authentic of the two seems to be the signing of Queens Park’s 16 year old Reagan Thompson. The Scotland U17 captain has already broken into The Spiders first team and if reports in the Daily Record are to be believed, we’ve edged ahead of Celtic and Rangers and are ‘close’ to signing the highly rated midfielder.
Thompson played and made two assists for the Scottish youth team in their game with Iceland last week, where he was apparently watched by scouts from several top clubs.
The other reported transfer rumour seems a little stranger, with Alan Nixon from The Sun claiming an exclusive that Bruce is very interested in signing Chelsea’s Reece James.
The right back is very highly rated at Chelsea, but Nixon says Frank Lampard would be interested in allowing James to head out on loan for some valuable game time. It is being described as an ‘ambitious’ move by Bruce, howevever, with him receiving a lot of interest from elsewhere and backed to be a Chelsea regular before long.
Chelsea rejected an offer from Brighton in the summer for James, who spent a very successful season on loan last year at Wigan. Not only did James captain them towards the end of last season but he was also named in the Championship team of the year.
While James is a brilliant prospect, it seems unlikely the club would sanction a deal for James, particularly after we just signed Emil Krafth in the summer, and still have DeAndre Yedlin and Javier Manquillo on the books. However, we’ve made loan signings in th last couple of January windows, with varying degrees of success.
With Ibrahima Sissoko tipped to sign from Strasbourg, a loan move for James touted and Thompson heading to our U-23 set up according to reports in Scotland, it seems our January transfer plans may have stepped up a notch.
