Martins Out, Marquinhos In. But Only Just.

By: Daryl | January 18th, 2009

Managing: Newcastle
Date: 1st Feb, 2010
Progress: 7th in Prem after 23 games, out of every cup except Europa League. Sold Oba Martins for more than his min fee release clause. Suckers!

As you may recall, I’ve decided to sell Oba Martins. It’s not that he’s sick of me yelling at him, it’s more that he thinks he’s better than Newcastle. Which he’s not, by the way.

So I put the word out, and the bids came in.

He has a £13m minimum fee release clause, but that’s only triggered when a club makes a money up front bid (none of this after 20 goals, or spread over 24 months nonsense.)

Only Man Utd bid the straight £13m, with Spurs, Juventus, Fiorentina and Roma all offering various structured packages. I had no choice but to accept Utd’s bid, but I told Spurs to eff off (since we’re rivals in the race for non Big Four glory) and accepted Roma’s £14.75m over 12 months offer.

I was convinced he’d go, so went out to spend the money before I’d even got it.

And I spent it, ladies and gents, on Brazilian wonderkid Marquinhos (or Marcos Antônio da Silva Gonçalves, to give him his full name). Very excited about this lad, as he can play as a striker, an attacking mid or as a winger on either side. Looking at his attributes, there’s no way he’s going to be anything other than brilliant. Unless he freezes to death in the January North-East weather. Brrr.

I agreed a fee of £12.2m with Paleirmas for the Brazilian, then sat down with the boy’s entourage and agreed a contract. Now all I had to do was sit back and wait for the work permit process to take its natural course (denied … appeal … granted).

Which it did (phew), but that bad news is that when it came time to sign, Martins was still talking turkey with Man Utd and Roma. So I politely asked Palmeiras to stall the deal for a week (which took us to Jan 30th) in the hope that Martins would make up his damn mind. The Palmeiras people looked at me funny, but agreed.

In the meantime, there was football to be played. Unfortunately. Is it just me, or do you almost not feel like playing the actual football matches when you’re waiting for transfer business to get done?

Quick summary: I lost 2-1 to Liverpool in the FA Cup 3rd Round replay, drew the second leg of the Carling Cup semi 1-1 against Spurs before losing on pens (Steven Taylor missed, ass man Chris Hughton recommended telling Taylor I was “angry” in the post match team talk, but I didn’t have the heart. Chris Hughton apparently has a heart of stone).

Then I went to Old Trafford and got mullered 4-2 by Man Utd (two great goals from Robert Lewandowski though, who’s in cracking form and keeping The Pog out the team). I followed that up with a 3-0 win over Villa (two more goals from Lewandwoski) and a 1-0 loss to Arsenal (but only because Manuel Almunia stopped everything that came at him.)

Finally, Martins made his mind up and signed with Roma. £14.75m for Newcastle, but I only get 75% of that. Which left me about £200,000 short of the fee needed to make Marquinhos a Magpie.

This left me really regretting paying Chelsea £500,000 to get Salomon Kalou on loan til the end of the season (oh, forgot to mention, I paid Chelsea £500,000 to get Salomon Kalou on loan til the end of the season). Waste of money (not sure I should really be trusted with money to be honest) but good addition to the squad.

Now comes the financial drama:

I managed to find the extra money by loaning Damien Duff to Championship strugglers Stoke. They picked up 40% of his £65,000 a week wages (a fortune I know, which is why he won’t leave. He’s the Winston Bogarde of the North-East.) That gave me just enough room to adjust the transfer budget by lowering the wage budget. Just in time. And now Marquinhos is a Newcastle player.

One day later I managed to sell Leonardo (occasionally brilliant, but too lazy/inconsistent for my liking) to Birmingham for £2m. All in all, a decent January transfer window. No money left over for Vagner Love, but he’s on my radar for the summer.

Here are my ins and outs for the the Jan transfer window and last summer combined: