United hit the £50 million mark with Thauvin capture

toonsy

Florian Thauvin
Florian Thauvin
Newcastle United have taken their summer spending beyond the £50 million mark with the £13 million capture of Florian Thauvin from Marseille.

The 22-year-old has signed a five-year contract at St James’ Park in a deal which will see Remy Cabella depart Tyneside for Marseille on an initial season-long loan deal which could be made permanent next summer subject to certain conditions being met.

I’m intrigued with this one. The sounds from France seem to suggest that Marseille have got the better end of the deal as Cabella is, or was, a full French international while Thauvin has just potential to unlock. But a 22-year-old has the time to unlock that potential and it seems that within the corridors of St James’ Park he has been deemed as worth the risk.

The club have been tracking him for a long time and now it seems as though they finally have their man. Described by Arsene Wenger a couple of years ago as the brightest young talent in French football the attacker doesn’t have a hassle free past. He rather publicly fell out with fans at Marseille after a recent defeat to Caen and got himself involved with a fan after reportedly being spat on. Mind you if someone gobbed at me I’d give much the same response…

There was also the time he signed for Lille only to get loaned back to Bastia. That summer, without playing a game for Lille, Marseille became interested and he then basically went on strike to force a move. But hey, a Frenchman going on strike isn’t exactly surprising is it?

Anyway, let’s have a look at what Thauvin has had to say about his move to Newcastle and the Premier League:

“I am delighted to be a Newcastle United player. I have come from France to a really big club and am very happy to be here,” said Thauvin.

He added: “It is a big honour to know that Newcastle have been after me for such a long time and that they wanted me that much. They have put their trust in me and I am looking forward to playing for the team.”

Meanwhile, the guy who is tasked with unlocking the potential had this to say: “Florian is a player the club have been watching for a long time and I am delighted that we have been able to sign him.”

“He is a perfect signing for this club – someone who is young, with great potential and is one of the best young players in Europe. He is an exciting, creative talent who can score goals and make assists, and we believe he will have a very bright future at Newcastle.”

*Obligatory YouTube video below*

So signing number five then alongside Georginio Wijnaldum, Aleksandar Mitrovic, Chancel M’Bemba and the yung lad for the future, maybe, Ivan Toney.

What do you make of this piece of business?

About toonsy

A lifelong Newcastle fan and current webmaster of this very 'blog who has the sole aim of creating a place by Newcastle United fans, for Newcastle United fans.

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254 thoughts on “United hit the £50 million mark with Thauvin capture”

  2. Doesn’t look like Austin will be going to West Ham judging by what Sullivan has said. Quite derogatory actually! But in many ways true.

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  3. Stuart thankyou for agreeing that Colocini is past it and should never of been offered a new contract. I think Colocini’s lack of leadership in defence has ruined the careers of Mbiwa and Williamson. He just doesn’t seem to care. Sometimes you need your captain to give other players a dam good bollocking for there mistakes. Colocini is over the hill now, past it. He will ruin Mbemba next, you wait and see.

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  5. We’ve been relegated once with Colocini in defence and almost twice after that. Gloss over the cracks if you like but Colocini is a very bad defender and an even worse captain.

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  6. TDS – I still think we need one, and then we can get shot of willo and tayls who aren’t good enough. Mbemba will need to cover RB as this won’t be the onnly red card Jan gets this season. That leaves youngsters Dummett and Lascelles to fight it out for the other spot.

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  7. So far we have conceded 2 goals every game. Is that an improvement from last season ? I would say no! McClaren hasn’t addressed the big issue and thats our defence.

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  8. TAE

    I pay to watch my club play. I play to watch the players play with passion to represent the shirt. I’m not going to decide whether to watch on the basis of one signing.

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  10. TOONDARNSARF
    1 things for sure i would not pay money to watch collos pityfull efforts at what he calls defending

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  11. NEWKIE

    I just think people need to move on from this. Comments McClaren has made make it clear that he wants to keep Colo and Taylor and that Colo will be first choice.

    What centre back do you seriously think we should sign?

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  12. Stuart

    No. I’d hope the new coach would change it. Colo hasn’t lost his ability overnight and winning headers isn’t just a matter of being tall. It’s a lot about position and timing and that’s helped when the defence work together.

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  13. TOONDARNSARF
    position and timing 😯 the only thing ive got to say about that is he dont win many headers dos he bud so weres that leave ya postion and timing 🙄

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  16. Terry,not sure if you are taking the **** or not….. but Mbiwa and Collo hardly played together so how Collo ruined his career is more than likely going to be a figment of your imagination. Willo, well he has probably had a better career than his skill set would dictate…

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  17. His agent Abdelkader Jilani has been quoted saying: “Abdennour will leave. Aymen wants to live a new adventure and there are opportunities for him in Italy, Spain and England.

    “Serie A is his priority. This Italian championship pleases him greatly.

    “He has already had a few contacts with AC Milan, for example, as with AS Roma and Inter Milan, who showed real interest.”

    He’ll obviously choose us, he’ll have to fight Willo for the jersey tho 😀

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  18. Sorry, TDS but also seem to be under the impression that McClaren is Harry Potter and can reverse the ageing process. News for you – he can’t! Colo is past his best and nobody is going to improve him against crosses at this stage in his career.

    If you’re happy with the defence as it is then fine, but you seem to be at odds with even the coaches who know and say we are short there. Teams who constitently concede more goals than almost every other team don’t have good defenders.

    Even in the face of 63 goals last season, a dreadful Pre season a less than impressive defensive start this season you still too pig headed to admit it? Fair enough. Just strange.

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  19. I suppose it’s a bit like saying we would be ok if all our strikers were at Rivière’s standard as long as we had enough of them… 😯

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  20. Aussie I’m not entirely joking mate. Colocini is the the captain. I never see him barking orders at his team mates and that really gets to me. If he can’t do that he shouldn’t be captain it’s that simple. He might be a nice person and all that but sometimes player’s will take advantage of your that and not perform so well. I have seen it time and time again. As for him being a bad defender, he is but no-one picks up on it because Williamson has been a lot worse. I don’t rate Colocini and organising the defence is his duty. Most of the fault lies with him.

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  22. To be fair, Terry, Colo has been a good player for us for the last 7 years. He has been consistently our best defender for years but he’s 33 and not getting any younger.

    Maybe we will get through one more season with these defenders but we then shouldn’t expect much and certainly not top 8. We have too many centre halves at the club and non of them ba Mbemba are much cop to be fair. Although we don’t quite know about Lascelles. He has potential we’re told.

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  23. Unless TDS, you know something we don’t? Is Colo, Mbemba and Taylor going to get through the entire season with getting injured?

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  24. I think people are confusing quantity and quality with our defenders. Laschelles couldn’t even make the bench ahead of Williamson against Swansea. So that is McClaren preferring a player who is scared of the ball in his new passing system!

    If Timmy is going to stay on his line we need some height. It is obvious to most on here so it must be obvious to opposition coaches. McClaren needs to be given time to establish his system but you can’t teach height.

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  30. My gut reaction when we get a corner is not that it will be an opportunity to score, it is that it will give our opponents an opportunity to counter attack. Similarly, when the opposition get a corner or a free kick out wide, I always feel we are likely to concede. It could be Krul, it could be Coloccini, but they obviously don’t work well together. Something has to change and it seems that it wont and that Lascelles may as well go out on loan again to see if he is any good at all.

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  31. Eric – You’re being a bit harsh onb the counter attack comment but when any team gets a free kick or corner against us we always look like conceding a chance. It use to be a running joke with the lads but now it’s not funny anymore! We really have looked so woeful defending balls in the box something really should have been done. I hope Mbemba makes all the difference.

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  32. Stuart: that’s just my gut reaction about our corners. It is backed up by the stats though as we have only scored 1 goal from a corner in 2 years.

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  33. TDS – I know what you mean about moving on, I don’t think we’ll actually sign anyone else as like you say, Colo has been extended, but that doesn’t mean I can’t disagree with that policy. I think Colo should have gone a while ago when his head was turned – fair enough nobody would pay for him and he didn’t want to pay off his own contract, but giving him an extension seemed very unusual. I’d have taken Richards, or Okore from Villa, or Kalidou Koulibaly from Napoli

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  34. We reallly do need a c/h,yes Mbemda does look a beast but how long can the lad cover for two which he has to with Colo,his game will go backwards very quick and fans will blame him for not being good enough give the lad a chance and get him some help

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  36. I am not sure if we should be judging us by our performance against Swansea though. They seem to be a very well coached team with a lot of good players and we were down to 10 men for half the game (although the way Daryl played in the first half we may as well have only had 10 men).

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  41. The thing about these 2 games, and i guess what has hit home with the new coaching staff, is that maybe Colo and Mbemba can go on to create a decent partnership and the back 4-5 can develop into a decent unit, but can they defend against crosses from corners, free kicks and wingers. The answer, from these 2 games, looks to be a resounding: “No!” It must have given them serious pause for thought, and that they probably were not going to go after another CB but may well now feel they can’t risk not. We’ll see.

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  42. Just on the extra cb needed. . I wonder if we have a deal lined up for Willo already but we are waiting until we get the replacement signed. . It may explain why none of our poor regular cb’s have been sold yet!

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  43. They want locking up if they’re relying on anything with Willo. Just sign a good CB and pay willo off. Don’t even ask a fee.

    If Simpson can get Timmy coming out more, Mbemba settles and Mitro comes back for set pieces and if Haidara or Dummett can stop the crosses . . . fck it just buy a CB! 😥

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  44. Lionel Speed
    August 20, 2015 at 14:25

    The thing about these 2 games, and i guess what has hit home with the new coaching staff, is that maybe Colo and Mbemba can go on to create a decent partnership and the back 4-5 can develop into a decent unit…

    So, Lionel, what have you or McClaren seen to think this then?

    This should be good.

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  45. Not talking about fees or compo for Willo, just enough bodies to cover us this season. Don’t want to be selling him and then not secure a replacement….

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  46. NEWKIE

    I wouldn’t want to see us sign a player whose star was really high (Richards) and then has plummeted. When has that worked well? I’m thinking of the likes of Adam Johnson, SWP, Jeffers etc. He had his chance and he didn’t take it.

    Okore was only signed last summer and is fairly young. Wasn’t overly impressed from what I saw, don’t think Villa would let him go cheaply anyway and I don’t think that’s a good combination with Mbema.

    And no way to the guy from Napoli. We NEED to have someone with PL experience in that position.

    I didn’t like the whole Colo situation, but you can understand it surely? He wasn’t tempted by money or the CL, he was drawn to it because of family Surely that’s understandable? Wouldn’t you do the same?

    I would have preferred that we didn’t extend his contract. Instead we waited 6 months to see how he performs and then decide, but it’s clear that another club offered him a good 3 year contract and we had to do something or he’d have left.

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  47. Not necessary, Stu, that is not the point. The point was even if they could go on to do that, and that part obviously can’t be judged on 2 games, the fact that we concede aerial goals so easily has probably given even more pause for thought than maybe they had thought previously. That, maybe, the Colo contract extension and addition of Mbemba was going to see them through to at least January, but that may have changed. And these Monaco rumors may have some life in them. Hope so, as that lad looks a beast, if not, sadly, injury prone.

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  48. Aussie – there’s enough bodies at the club to let Willo go. I also doubt if Colo and Willo combined cleared more than 5-6 set pieces with headers since we got them and that seems like 20 years!

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  49. I also hope these Monaco rumours are true because I can’t stand the thought of Colocini being anywhere near are defence. 190 goals conceded in three season’s is bloody awful.

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  50. Georgio, that’s harsh mate 😉 still if we get rid of Willo and not replace him, we have injury prone Saylor, no experience Chancel and no where near ready Lacaselles as options. . We need that extra body…

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  52. So how do we get round this then, TDS? Are we not allowed to bring in a top defender if they have never played in the PL?

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  53. STUART

    No. I think it would be absolutely stupid to do that. How ridiculous does a first choice defence seem of a relatively novice LB, a RB in his first season and 2 CBs coming from foreign leagues. No thanks!!

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  54. TDS – I’ll bet none of the 4.4 headers a match were in our penalty area. They say he’s very strong in the air which is total bollocks. He’s very strong at two things – hoofing the ball anywhere and falling down. And not bad at waving his arms around.

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  55. TDS: So Willo is a Carch 22, we are **** in the air without him and **** on the ground with him (he is scared of the ball at his feet, which isn’t a good thing when you are a professional footballer). It says that MBemba should be Coloccini’s replacement. I think Colo flatters to achieve (deceive) as he has the skill but is too slow for the PL as it is now.

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  56. You seem to be under the misapprehension that it can actually get worse! If you think a top defender like Matip or the guy from Monaco would be worse than what we have now, then it’s you who knows nothing about football, not everyone else.

    Also Hadaira has been in English football nearly 3 seasons and Janmaat has one full season under his belt.

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  57. Georgio: you are doing Willo a great injustice. He is also very good at pointing to Krul when he is in acres of space and is the obvious option for a pass. And 3.1 of those 4.1 headers were head tennis and from our corners that never, never, ever f-in ever resulted in anything.

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  58. The good news for this Saturday is that Rooney is almost as slow as Coloccini nowadays (crosses fingers and knocks on wood in case this comment come back to inevitably bite him).

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  59. I’ve read that post at 128 several times and I still can’t make it into any kind of sense.

    Sorry about that Eric – he used to be my favourite footballer. Also he doesn’t go up for our corners to win the ball. Somebody told him when he was 12 that’s what he should do – just go up.
    He needs a paddock of his own where he can fall down to his hearts content.

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  61. ERIC

    Mbemba can now do the running that Colo can’t do. Leaving Colo to focus on being in the right position. I always felt that alongside Willo, Colo was trying to do too much.

    I really can’t see the club going to the trouble with Colo and then signing a centre back from abroad to replace him.

    I also think people think far too simply about football and forget the details like the fact that Colo knows the PL and NUFC very well so is a vital piece in the jigsaw for this season. Just like players like Shola were also fantastic around the dressing room and willing to put his body on the line

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  62. As it stands, if we added, for example, Abdennour, that would be him, Colo, Mbemba and Taylor – I, for one, would be over the bloody moon to have that choice. If Taylor and Colo went on a run of games where they didn’t concede much and deserved their places, so be it. If neither them got much of a look in for a while because the other two were so good, so be it.

    With the fact we are proving now, to many doubters disbelief, that Ashley was – at the end of the season – finally talking straight about investment, then if there is a bit more in the pot, or there would be some in January, it is starting to look like McC would be calling it straight, just like nearly every Toon fan in the world is now, and saying we’ve got get another decent CB in. Otherwise, we may well have wasted, in the short-term, the investment and good will that has just been made and earned.

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  64. Well TDS: we can hire Ant and Dec to be cheeky chappies in the dressing room and a Shire Horse to provide something to put it’s body on the line for the team and provide a reasonable facsimile of what Shola did in his 13 years at the club (except against the Mackems).

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  65. I agree with LS as well. Has the world spun off its axis. Next I will be saying Carver is the best coach ever and agreeing with Troy.

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  66. People really think we’re going to have a new top CB plus Mbemba plus Colo plus Taylor plus Lascelles and Dummett? Who do you think we are?

    Who did Chelsea have last season? Terry and Cahill played most games with Zouma coming in for a few and Ivanovic can play there as well.

    There have been criticisms of the club for not giving youth enough of a chance. How would Lascelles and Dummett feel to be 5th and 6th choice centre backs?

    If we didn’t plan to play Colo or Taylor regularly then they should be sold. Lascelles and Dummett need to be 4th and 5th choice.

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  69. TDS, i was hoping from more from Colo out of the blocks, and i would still keep him, because we ain’t going to buy 3 CBs whatever happens, but his lack of will for the fight and lack of command in the air really are a problem now, and then add to that no great pace. He can and probably will still do a job for us but as it stands, with the games we have got coming up and the fact that he hasn’t come out for the new season all guns blazing, sends huge alarm bells for the rest of the season.

    I thought, before we kicked a ball, we could get a season out of him, but general manner and points above mean that, if I was McC ( and there is a bit of cash still available, which there seems there is) I can’t take that chance, from a new league or not get some monster in there who can run fast, attack the ball in the air and play it when it is on the ground. If he can do those three things, then a few new league adjustment clangers can be ignored, when his general game is a step up.

    Every Toon related media outlet, blog or national, is pretty much saying we need a new CB. I have feeling McC, Simpson and Cathro are saying the same.

    The question is, I don’t think they want rid of Sissoko, but if it was him leaving to get Abdennour in, would we go for that? Or should we be greedy and want both? 😀

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  71. TDS, seems to be under the impression everyone on here is saying we should collect centre halves like hand bags! Not sure anyone is saying that. Taylor and Williamson can be aold for me. That wouls allow a new, better centre half to be brought in. Not hard to understand.

    A good centre half might get up to speed quite quickly. Mbemba seems to be quite happy. Or are you saying every player from another country needs a season to be better than Williamson or Taylor? Maybe the likes of Man Utd or Arsenal should buy them just to see them through until any new defenders they buy get up to speed…

    This is getting farcical.

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  72. Lionel, I would obviously want both, but having said that I think I would sacrifice Sissoko for Matip or the like. Sissoko wasn’t that good last season.

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  73. ERIC

    Why so negative about certain players? The likes of Watson, Howey, Peacock and Barton weren’t exactly amazing players, yet we all got behind them. In fact we’ve barely had any top centre backs at our club in the Premier League! Ok, I can think of one that moved to a truly big club. Woodgate. Any others?

    I think Colo, Mbemba, Taylor and Lascelles is what we’ll be going in with.

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  74. TDS: we can play Dummett at left back and Laschelles needs to go on loan again to see if he is even good enough. It is OK to make a mistake when you are a forward as the whole team is behind you to make up for it, but a CB making errors costs you a match. Laschelles could turn out to be great but it is too much of a risk at the minute to rely on him. He’s going to play for the U21s?

    And who would take Taylor with his injury record and wages?

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  75. And TDS: I don’t think I am being that negative about our CBs

    – Lascelles, untested and needs gametime.
    – Colo, good on the ball but slow
    – MBemba, only played 2 games so I have no clue really
    – Taylor, his injury record shows he is injury prone
    – Williamson, well let’s not go there
    – Dummett, needed at left back

    I would play MBemba and Taylor until Tayls gets injured. Might get us through until January when we can make a panic buy 🙂

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