United may bid for £25m former striker Toney
NEWCASTLE have been linked with a move for former striker Ivan Toney.
The Sun claims United are one of three Premier League clubs monitoring the forward, who is rated at £25m after originally leaving the Magpies for just £650,000.
Leicester City are mentioned as the team with most interest, but West Ham and Newcastle are also looking at Toney in case Brentford miss out on promotion this season.
Toney has only been with the Bees for a season but, along with another former Newcastle man Adam Armstrong, he is among the Championship’s top scorers. A summer move from Peterborough, which benefited Newcastle thanks to a sizeable sell-on clause, has been a big success. He has 24 goals in 30 games.
Toney was picked up by Brentford in the summer as they wanted to transform a team they felt had been “too nice” in the wake of Ollie Watkins leaving for Aston Villa. As well as finisher’s instinct and the physical attributes that have helped take him to the top of the Championship scorers charts, they also noted a strong mentality and will-to-win.
Whether Newcastle could afford to duel for players in the Toney price bracket this summer is a matter for debate. United need more firepower but it’s understood they will have a crunched budget if there is no takeover in the close season.
ANDY Woodman insists Mike Ashley was ‘fantastic’ during his time at Newcastle United but the Magpies’ former goalkeeping coach can see how the club’s owner ‘rubbed up people the wrong way’.
Following their previous spells together at West Ham and Charlton, Alan Pardew brought Woodman with him to Tyneside when the Londoner succeeded Chris Hughton at Newcastle in 2010.
Pardew and his staff went on to be handed eight-year deals by Ashley just months after Newcastle came mightily close to breaking into the top four in 2012.
Although Woodman initially stayed on after Pardew left for Crystal Palace, in 2015, the goalkeeping coach soon followed his former team-mate back to Selhurst Park.
While Ashley made some strange decisions during Woodman’s time at the club, such as renaming St James’ Park and appointing Joe Kinnear as the club’s director of football, the 49-year-old can’t fault how he was treated personally.
He said: “I get some of the things he did and they rubbed up the people the wrong way. I completely get that and there were moments I thought, ‘Why has that happened?’ But it wasn’t my position to ask that.
“He would land his helicopter at training. I would be training the ‘keepers and I would hear this sound in the distance. I would think to myself, ‘What’s that?’ This helicopter would swoop in. I swear: the balls would be flying everywhere. He would get out and he would be like, ‘How are you fella?’
“What do you call him? Chairman? Owner? I would say, ‘All right, Mike’. ‘Yeah, all right’. He was just one of you and you would think, ‘This geezer owns the club and he’s brilliant’. He would come in and have lunch with everyone and say hello to everyone.”