Gervinho praises Newcastle as scouts prepare for weekend of work.

Newcastle are going to be linked with an awful lot of names over the summer, but one of those names that keeps cropping up is that of Gervinho.

To start with, Cheik Tiote recommended the signing of Gervinho when asked who he would like to see playing at St James' Park. This was then followed up by Graham Carr stating that we had been looking at the Ivory Coast international on one of our many, seemingly endless in fact, scouting missions across The Channel.

Now the player himself has fuelled rumours (or poured cold water on them, delete as you wish) by paying tribute to Newcastle United whilst stating his committment to Lille at the same time. Make of it what you will, but we've heard similar lines from some of our former players shortly before they moved away from NUFC. Speaking to French reporters, Gervinho had this to say;

“Newcastle are a good team. I have been linked to various teams now but I am still under contract at Lille until 2012, so I am not worrying. We are top of the league and I want to win that. At the end of the season we can sit down and see what the next step will be. I want to concentrate on my football."

“The Spanish and English leagues are two of the best in the world and it would be a privilege to play there, but I belong to Lille until 2012.”

Make of that what you will. Understandably there are a lot of clubs interested in Gervinho, so perhaps it is some reassurance that our scouts and backroom staff are out and about again this weekend keeping tabs on potential new summer recruits. At least that way, should we not be interested in Gervinho or should any potential move not come off for him, we will at least have a backup plan. Well that's the theory anyway.

Alan Pardew will be watching the Wales v England game this afternoon, although his only hint is that he will be watching it purely for tactical reasons and to monitor the performance of Matt Jarvis who is likely to feature for Wolves in next weekends crunch clash with Wolves at St James' Park. Speaking to the club website about the England game, Pardew had this to say;

“I will be watching, because there’s one or two who could feature against us, like Matt Jarvis of Wolves. It will be interesting to see how that fixture unfolds.”

Pards then progressed to talking about the rest of the international fixtures. He added;

“But there will be a lot of fixtures this weekend that I will have my eye on because there’s one or two players we need to view as well. So our scouts are out and about all over Europe this weekend, checking on players we hope will have some significance here.”

Time will tell whether we are being paid lip service or whether the club are actually getting their arse into gear and are looking at doing things properly and efficiently. For the sake of Newcastle United I hope it's the latter!

As ever, Howay the lads!