After some persistent links with winger Garry Rodrigues emerging from Turkey over the last few weeks, former Galatasaray assistant Ayhan Akman has warned Newcastle that he may not be ready for a move to the Premier League – even if his athleticism lends itself to English football.
It has been reported over the last week that we made a £6m offer for the Cape Verde international last summer, also seeing a marginally improved offer of £7m knocked back last month.
Such offers were not reported by the mainstream media in the UK, however Turkish reports remain adamant that the 27-year-old is a player Benitez has been tracking – with claims today also suggesting he’d be very keen on making the move to England this summer.
Rodrigues admitted over the weekend that Galatasaray won’t sell him for less than £13m this summer (almost double our latest offer) and his former coach Ayhan Akman has commented on these links to Newcastle today, suggesting he still has things to work on if he does end up making the move to England.
Here’s what Akman told the Turkish outlet Fanatik after talk of his potential move to Newcastle in the summer:
“He’s an athletic football player. The Premier League may suit him more (Than the Turkish League) as there will be more space for him to exploit,”
“However, he still needs to work on his game and improve. There are still problems with his end product.”
“He needs his game to be a bit more mature. There are problems in his final pass.”
With Jacob Murphy and Christian Atsu fitting into this category themselves, I wonder if we should be spending upwards of £10m on a player potentially similar to what we’ve already got?
I don’t know a great deal about Rodrigues, but I can’t see us paying much more than the alleged £7m offered for a player turning 28 this year whose got very limited pedigree in the game.
We shall see, but this *could* be one to watch in the summer.
