Newcastle's New Squad

23 June 2006   6:28 PM

One of my work colleagues - I'll not name him apart from to say he's from Barnsley, he's a Yorkshire Terrier, a tremendous fan of Yorkshire Cricket Club and his name is Adam Harper - isn't possibly the worlds greatest fan of my team, Newcastle United.

I put this down to a number of reasons:

• Bad taste in football teams
• An irrational dislike of the Geordie Superhero, Alan Shearer
• The fact he's surrounded by Newcastle fans who like nothing better than to annoy him about it

But one of the things he's sick of is Newcastle constantly being linked with every player imaginable by the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. To the extent that he's trying to compile a team of player's we've been linked with this summer that we haven't signed. Anyone we then go on to sign would then need to be removed from the list, but they can stay on the list if they sign for someone else.

To be honest, I'm fed up with the constant "you saw it here first" reporting because frankly if you link Newcastle with every player, you're bound to be right with one of them eventually. So here we have an alliance of a Newcastle fan and a Newcastle-not-a-fan-at-all combining to give you:

The Newcastle Team That Isn't

Please bear in mind the positions are a bit 'loose'. I've gone for a 4-4-2 and just shoehorned someone into the position that I think most approximates to their actual one. Anyway, so far we have...

Goalkeepers

None as yet

Left Backs

None as yet

Centre Halves

J Woodgate (Real Madrid)

R Huth (Chelsea)

Right Backs

P Chimbonda (Wigan)

Left Midfield/Wing

A Robben (Chelsea)

Central Midfield

None as yet

Right Midfield/Wing

S Malbranque (Fulham)

S Wright-Phillips (Chelsea)

Strikers

D Kuyt (Feyernoord)

R Van Nistelrooy (Man Utd)

J Floyd Hasselbaink

All I can say is, watch out Chelsea. At this rate, we'll have half your team.