Tony Cascarino has suggested that Newcastle United “missed a trick” by not signing Salomon Rondon on a permanent deal last season.
The Venezuelan has been a revelation at St. James’ Park since joining on loan from West Brom in preseason, but Cascarino believes that the Magpies should have stumped up the cash to make that deal full-time before a ball was kicked.
Writing in his column for The Times, he said: “Newcastle missed a trick by not signing Salomón Rondón for £16 million last summer.
“The Venezuela forward moved on loan from West Brom, but Newcastle had the option to sign him and turned it down. Some thought that £16 million for a 29-year-old would be one of the club’s worst transfer decisions in history.
“They might regret that if he joins another club when his loan finishes. Rondón has been pivotal to that forward line and the way he drags people out of position allows Ayoze Pérez, who scored a hat-trick against Southampton, to thrive.”
OPINION
They say hindsight sees in 20/20, and that is certainly the case here. How could anybody have realistically predicted that Rondon would have had the impact that he has so far this season? The Venezuelan was a decent player for West Brom when they were in the Premier League, but that was about as far as it went, decent. £16 million is a lot of money to splash out on a player approaching 30 who might ultimately do nothing for the team. That doesn’t justify Mike Ashley’s decision, and there are owners out there who would have sanctioned the move in a heartbeat, but he will have looked around the league at deals that have turned sour and concluded that he didn’t want a piece of that action. Look at Christian Benteke’s move to Crystal Palace, for instance. Sometimes strikers don’t fire, and for a chairman as stingy as Ashley, that kind of swoop was never on the cards. Now, however, it is easy to see that he did miss a trick, and the Toon Army will just be hoping that he has the opportunity to fix his error.