Newcastle United: Steve Wraith claims that the club were close to signing Chris Wood

Steve Wraith has been speaking on the latest edition of NUFC Matters with Liam Kennedy about all things relating to Newcastle United.

One of the topics that Wraith spent some time on was transfers, and he claimed that Rafael Benitez didn’t want to sign Joelinton and wanted to permanently sign Salomon Rondon instead and before that, he tried to sell Aleksandar Mitrovic and sign Chris Wood.

He said: “Rafa wanted to sign Rondon, he wanted Rondon permanently, he wanted to spend that money on Rondon obviously, there [were] other players potentially that they wanted to bring in, but it wasn’t going to happen.

“It was the same [when] he was trying to get rid of Mitrovic; he didn’t want Mitrovic at the club; he didn’t rate him.

“He couldn’t sell him because he couldn’t be guaranteed to get a replacement. He couldn’t be guaranteed he’d be given the money to get a replacement.

“Chris Wood had done the deal to go to Burnley, and he was happy to come to Newcastle as long as it was a done deal but couldn’t do it.”

TIF Thoughts on Wood joining Newcastle…

This is an interesting claim, and it seems to suggest that in the summer of 2017, when the New Zealand international joined Burnley, he could have moved to the Toon instead.

Since Wood has moved to Turf Moor, he has scored 40 goals for Burnley in the Premier League, which, considering he cost £14.76m that is a good return.

We will never know what might have happened had he joined the Toon, but if this claim is true, it just shows that the Rondon and Joelinton situation was not the first time the Toon failed Rafael Benitez.

When you look at Rondon’s one season on Tyneside, he scored 11 league goals and provided seven assists.

In contrast, Joelinton, in nearly two seasons, has scored three goals and provided four assists, so you can see why Benitez wanted Rondon over Joelinton.

In other news: ‘I could see that’ – Mark Douglas claims 43 y/o is ‘realistic’ replacement for Bruce at NUFC