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Two Newcastle Fringe Players Targeted By Same Club

10 years ago
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Reports this morning claim both Mehdi Abeid and Romain Amalfitano could be making permanent moves this summer, to the same club.

Amalfitano and Abeid have spent the last season on loan, The Frenchman at LIgue 2 club Dijon and Abeid in Greece at Panathinaikos.

The Northern Echo claim that as well as wanting to make Abeid’s move permanent, the Greek club also want to recruit Amalfitano.

Nikos Dabizas is part of the set-up at Panathinaikos and he is the one said to be driving the potential deals, using his Newcastle contacts.

While Abeid has undoubtedly been a success story in Greece, scoring double figures and helping his on loan club to Champions League qualification, Amalfitano has made 18 starts for Dijon and scored two goals.

Always hard to compare standards in other leagues but quite clearly, certainly judging by the crowds, the French second tier and Greek top division are a number of levels below the Premier League.

Over half the clubs in the Greek top tier average under two thousand watching them, while in France there are a couple in the second division who average a couple of thousand and only four clubs in the past season managed a 10,000 or more average.

A massive strength of the English leagues is the sheer scale of things, both in terms of the number of professional clubs and players, as well as crowds. Something that makes the latest FA rubbish ideas of B teams look ever more ludicrous.

While it would be tempting to believe Abeid could have improved in leaps and bounds while on loan, the reality must surely be that he is still some way below being able to do any kind of a job in the Premier League.

As for Amalfitano, I think he simply looks the worst player we’ve signed since Fumaca – the only Brazilian in the world who couldn’t play football.

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