Newcastle United transfers: Top target James Maddison has been told ‘he will be one of the first to leave’ Leicester City when the transfer window opens.
Newcastle have been long-term admirers of the England attacking-midfielder with Leicester knocking back two bids last summer. The Foxes value Maddison at £60million but could be pushed to sell should they be relegated from the Premier League as he remains a top target for Newcastle.
Leicester currently sit second bottom of the table, two points from safety with three games left to play. And after the 5-3 defeat to Fulham on Monday, Maddison said afterwards: “Big game for us and we were not at it. We were not hungry enough to want to win the game. We need to do the basics well. We were not aggressive enough.“
As the Leicester resident attempted to defend his remarks on social media, he received criticism.
What is wrong with social media, he tweeted? Say something in an interview right after a game, and it will be completely misconstrued.
“By not being proactive and on the front foot in duels, I mean that neither of us wanted to win or understood how important it was.
We should only blame and apologize to ourselves for today’s performance since we were not good enough.
“But as someone who sees the work we are doing every single day to try and put this right, it’s not down to attitude or application. We will keep going until the very end.”
But talkSPORT pundit Simon Jordan wasn’t buying the 26-year-old’s comments, branding them as hypocritical.
“He will be one of the first players on the train away from Leicester to somewhere else,” Jordan told talkSPORT. “Don’t you have the audacity to come on and talk about a lack of hunger or not winning duels because you will be gone.”
“We’re talking about appetite and hunger – if you’re not prepared to win your first battles and win the duels and be on the front foot then you’re not playing for the shirt in the way you should because those are the default settings: ability, adversity, challenges and mistakes, those are things that happen that you can’t legislate for.
“The one thing in life that you can control is your own reaction to things and their approach to the game – talk about the hunger side of things which has been extrapolated to a lack of desire and then he says, ‘what I meant to say is that we weren’t competitive enough in our duels, we didn’t win our battles – that’s the same thing.
“It’s the same thing just dressed up in a more palatable perspective. Hunger gets extrapolated up to a lack of desire, but the desire that’s required to meet the expectations of winning your duels, winning your battles and putting your best foot forward. It’s the same thing in a different guise.”
Newcastle are expected to make another move for Maddison in the summer with head coach Eddie Howe hoping to be handed a bumper transfer budget as a reward for potential Champions League qualification. The Magpies currently sit three points inside the top four with a game in hand and four left to play.
