By Johnny Vintis
Back in August 2014, NUFC and Alan Pardew were officially linked with an £8m move for “long standing target” Bas Dost.
That summer seemed to last a lifetime (like most NUFC summers these days) and alas the transfer never materialised – then every single window since, we were linked.
To be honest, it has become a joke in my house. I’m absolutely sick of it. There is a rumour that Jim Smith was first interested in Dost back in June 1989 but the move never materialised, Dost was only 1 month old at the time! OK that’s a joke but I feels like that long.
He’s just a small handful of the endless links:
- August 2014 – The Mirror credit Newcastle with ‘long-standing’ interest after some promising form for Wolfsburg (suggesting we’d actually trakced him during his time at Herenveen in 2012!).
- The summer of 2015 saw McClaren make a “laughable” bid according to then Wolfsburg manager Dieter Hecking.
- January 2016 saw us apparently fail to get a “deal over the line” for £10.5m.
- June 2016 – Again we were ‘front runners’ for him but were up against newly crowned Champions Leicester City
- 2017 reckoned we have a £35m bid rejected from Sporting Lisbon as they were wanting £52m – call me cynical but that’s probably why we bid £35m – God knows what we would do if they actually accepted. •
- Finally Dost is available on a free????? The waiting has actually paid off….oh wait. News arrives from The Chronicle that Dost has not had any approach by NUFC this summer (despite his extremely impressive goal to games ratio).
It looked like a messy deal to complete given his contract situation was unresolved, but a few weeks on and he has actually gone back to Sporting and signed a new contract – a move that must SURELY put an end to this nonsense?
OFFICIAL: Dutch striker Bas Dost has signed a new three-year deal at Sporting CP, a month after walking away from his contract. pic.twitter.com/6GHI7u1Lat
— TransferNewsCentral (@TransferNewsCen) July 23, 2018
Please let us not see any more links to Bas Bloody Dost.
I do think that he would have been class for us though and I think he could have made a big impact on the Premier League – unless of course he had already been Pardewed.
So with the Dost story finally put to rest, who is the next familiar name we’ll go ‘back in’ for? Danny Ings anyone?
