Chris Waugh has been speaking on a recent edition of The Athletic’s the Pod On The Tyne podcast about all things relating to Newcastle United.
One of the topics that he spent a bit of time on was the Toon signing Joe Willock on loan from Arsenal.
However, it seems as if Willock was not Newcastle’s first choice and in fact, they had wanted to sign Jesse Lingard from Manchester United.
The 24-cap England international decided to move to West Ham United instead, which if you look at the Premier League table, would appear to make a lot of sense.
Steve Bruce had claimed that he had missed out on his top target and it seems as if that man was Lingard before Waugh confirmed as such while talking about Willock’s arrival.
He said: “He wasn’t the first choice, they wanted Jesse Lingard, [he] really was that sort of player that they wanted and missed out, he went to West Ham.
“Ideally, what Bruce wanted was someone like Willock as well as Hamza Choudhury.”
Do you wish Newcastle signed Lingard?
No, happy with Willock
Yes, he is just what we need
TIF Thoughts on Newcastle’s transfer business…
It seems that the Toon wanted Lingard and also wanted to bring in Hamza Choudhury – only to end up with just Willock on loan, so you could say that they had a disappointing transfer window.
However, Willock has scored 11 goals in 78 appearances for Arsenal despite a limited amount of top-flight starts, and Bruce has been speaking about him highly, so it will be interesting to see what he will bring to the Toon.
Lingard, though, has already made a brilliant start to life for the Hammers with two goals on his debut against Aston Villa and we will be interested to see how he does for West Ham throughout the remainder of the season.
If he carries on as he has started, then you could argue that the Toon missed out on a good signing.