Colo; “I didn’t move to San Lorenzo last season because Newcastle didn’t want me to leave and I’m not going to move to San Lorenzo now because Newcastle don’t want me to go; I’ve got to respect that decision.”

The only small chance for me of him having a chance of being totally rehabilitated would have been for Colo to announce at the end of last season that he was our captain and would be there on August 17th to lead us back into battle….not have us hanging around to see if the Buenos Aires piggy banks would hold enough to make some kind of a feeble bid to take him back to Argentina.

As we all know, our captain tried to leave in January for ‘personal reasons’ but ended up staying for the rest of the season, with the club stating that they hoped that in the summer they hoped to persuade Colo to stay long-term.

San Lorenzo President; “They’ve (NUFC) managed to escape from the relegation zone, so they’ll now think about what is best for the player (Coloccini), that need to go back home.”

“Finally after long negotiations, we announce that Fabricio Coloccini will not join the roster of San Lorenzo. It is not possible to release the Newcastle player…”.

Then if the worst happens, Alan Pardew has to go all out to convince Mike Ashley that without one readymade Premier League quality centre-back coming in we will be in desperate straits. That is of course on top of the other quality centre-back we were already desperate for…

Throughout 2012 there were whispers of his dissatisfaction of being paired in a substandard defensive partnership. Newcastle have needed a top centre half to complement Colo for the past TWO seasons now and still the void has not been filled.