Despite winning silverware for the first time in over fifty years, and securing Champions League football on top of that, one set of stories continually plagued Newcastle United last season.
That was seeing the club’s top stars repeatedly linked with a move away from the North East to ‘bigger’ rivals, and often Premier League rivals.
From seeing Alexander Isak constantly touted with a move to Arsenal, to reminders than Anthony Gordon could’ve ended up at Liverpool last June, the transfer rumours were truly relentless for the club and our players.
But the club has stood firm on keeping its stars no matter what, despite continued interest from one of our European rivals in one of our most promising players.
Newcastle United are refusing to play ball in Man City’s pursuit of Tino Livramento; and rightly so.
Writing on X, [Fabrizio Romano](https://x.com/FabrizioRomano/status/1931395198342381914) revealed that negotiations aren’t going well for Pep Guardiola’s side, with Newcastle refusing to reduce their asking price and determined to keep the England talent.
He said: ‘Negotiations for Tino Livramento to Man City are currently complicated and on stand-by.”
‘Newcastle are not reducing their asking price as they want to keep Livramento, almost impossible to agree on terms in time for Club World Cup.’
This comes after Romano reported last month that the 22-year-old is one of City’s top targets to replace Kyle Walker, who is expected to leave permanently this summer.
Whilst not considered as untouchable as the likes of Alexander Isak or Sandro Tonali, it would take an astronomical figure for us to be tempted to sell Livramento this window; which has been built up as one where we’ll sign, not sell.
Although it hasn’t been disclosed just what our asking price is, you could imagine it might be even more than what City has paid for some of their defenders in the past.
Their deal for Joao Cancelo was approximately £60m, they signed Ruben Dias from Benfica for £62m plus bonuses, and Josko Gvardiol stands as the most expensive defender of all time, so Eddie Howe and co. have no reason to even welcome any low offers from Guardiola’s side.
We’ve already seen this window that rival clubs are imposing a ‘Saudi tax’ on us, assuming we have the finances to pay inflated prices for players.
Selling Livramento and signalling to the rest of world football that we have a lot more money and are in need of a new defender could be a massive mistake on top of selling a true star to a league rival.