Newcastle launch improved bid for RB Leipzig's Benjamin Sesko
Manchester United had still to submit a formal offer for the Slovenia international as of Monday afternoon.
Newcastle's first bid was worth an initial €75m (£65.5m) with a further €5m (£4.3m) in add-ons but the Tyneside club are now guaranteeing the Bundesliga club at least €80m.
United opted to prioritise a move for Sesko over Aston Villa's Ollie Watkins but the 22-year-old's price tag is creeping up now Newcastle have increased their initial offer.
Newcastle co-owner Jamie Reuben is said to have held positive talks with Leipzig on Monday.
Sesko is thought to be waiting to see what United do before making a final decision on his future.
However, Leipzig are reported to be unwilling to sell Sesko below their stated expectations on a fee.
On Sunday, Omar Berrada, the United chief executive, said the club's director of football Jason Wilcox and his recruitment team were working 'around the clock' to make further additions to the squad. United wanted to sign Liam Delap at the start of the season but the striker turned them down in order to join Chelsea from Ipswich for £30m.
'We have a team back home led by Jason – the recruitment team – that is working around the clock to ensure that we continue to find opportunities to strengthen our squad. There are lots of late calls and early morning meetings to make sure that we stay on top of it.'
Newcastle's move for Sesko comes amid continuing uncertainty over the future of Alexander Isak. The Sweden striker has signalled his desire to leave St James' Park. Liverpool had a £110m bid for Isak rejected last Friday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
13 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Aston Villa hopeful of completing the signing of Nice forward Evann Guessand - with the Ivory Coast star set to become Unai Emery's first major addition of the window
are working on the signing of Nice forward Evann Guessand and hope to complete a deal this week as they try to add extra competition to their attack. In what would be Villa's first significant move in the market this summer, Guessand would join Unai Emery 's men for about £28m. Villa have been looking for a new forward ever since Jhon Duran departed last January and seem to have settled on Guessand, who has been considered one of the most promising players in French football in recent seasons. He scored 13 goals and had 10 assists in all competitions last season and though he plays mainly through the middle, the 24-year-old can also operate on the flanks. Villa have insisted all summer that Ollie Watkins is not for sale but if they sign Guessand, it will be interesting to see whether clubs who admire Watkins make a serious move for him. Meanwhile, West Ham remain keen to sign Jacob Ramsey from Aston Villa with the midfielder currently keeping his options open over his long-term future. Though Ramsey is well-regarded by Villa boss Unai Emery, his status as a homegrown player means an eventual transfer fee represents pure profit in the club accounts – crucial in the current era of Premier League spending rules. Villa have been willing to listen to offers for Ramsey since the transfer window opened and are thought to value him at about £40million.
The Independent
15 minutes ago
- The Independent
Badenoch says Truss ‘carries quite a lot blame' for Tory record of as war of words continues
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said Liz Truss 'carries quite a lot of' responsibility for the party's record amid a row over the party's direction. Responding after former prime minister Ms Truss accused her of 'repeating spurious narratives', Badenoch said she was 'very focused on what the Conservatives are going to do now'. The Leader of the Opposition faced questions about Ms Truss's claim that under the Conservatives, 'the economy was wrecked with profligate Covid spending by (Rishi) Sunak' and that 'the huge increase in immigration has been a disaster'. Mrs Badenoch told ITV Anglia: 'I know that, as a former prime minister and a former foreign secretary, (Ms Truss) carries quite a lot of that blame. 'The party's now under new leadership. 'I wasn't in charge during those 14 years; she was. 'That's a criticism she's probably levelling at herself.' The Tory leader also said she was 'telling the truth' about her party's record. 'I'm telling the truth that immigration was too high – that's why we have much tougher policies to fix immigration,' she continued. 'I am telling the truth that taxes were too high, that we were putting a lot of regulation on businesses, and what we're seeing is Labour making every single thing worse. 'They're doing that because they haven't learned many of the lessons that we learned. They haven't learned from our mistakes. They're making worse mistakes.' The Labour government's mistakes include making 'no cut in spending at all – the books were not balanced', Mrs Badenoch claimed. 'We're spending more on welfare than we are on defence – that cannot continue,' she said. Mrs Badenoch had previously told The Telegraph that 'for all their mocking of Liz Truss, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have not learnt the lessons of the mini-budget and are making even bigger mistakes'. Ms Truss, who spent 49 days in Number 10, hit back when she said that 'instead of serious thinking', Mrs Badenoch was 'repeating spurious narratives'. She continued: 'I suspect she is doing this to divert from the real failures of 14 years of Conservative government in which her supporters are particularly implicated. 'It was a fatal mistake not to repeal Labour legislation like the Human Rights Act because the modernisers wanted to be the 'heirs to Blair'. 'Huge damage was done to our liberties through draconian lockdowns and enforcement championed by Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings. 'The economy was wrecked with profligate Covid spending by Sunak. The huge increase in immigration has been a disaster.' Mrs Badenoch also took questions about her identity, after she told the Rosebud podcast: 'I have not renewed my Nigerian passport, I think, not since the early 2000s. 'I don't identify with it any more, most of my life has been in the UK and I've just never felt the need to.' The North West Essex MP told ITV Anglia: 'I am definitely an Essex girl, that is a fact.' A London Assembly member before she took her Commons seat in 2017, Mrs Badenoch said: 'I represent an Essex constituency, these are my people. 'I was a Londoner, but Essex people asked me to be their MP, and I want to make sure that I do them proud. And I love this part of the world. 'It's fantastic being here. It's a rural community, and I've been talking to the farmers here. I talked about how my grandfather was a farmer, it's very hard work. 'The people of Essex and East Anglia – they are grafters. 'They work hard, and I want to make sure that we do right by them.' Mrs Badenoch spent Tuesday morning at a farm in Little Walden, where she tried her hand at harvesting wheat using a Claas Lexion combine harvester. She told farmers: 'A lot of farming just feels like constant interference. 'Everything is interfered from the minute you wake up.' Examples of interference included 'chemicals and insecticide, people you're hiring, how much you've got to pay them', plus changes to 'employers' NI (national insurance), then somebody wants to put pylons on, there's compulsory purchase, it's impacting the cost of the land, if you want to add a new farm building, there's planning applications', she said. 'It's just endless constant Government saying, 'You can't do this, you can't do that, you can't move forwards'. 'And the burden in my view has now crossed the threshold.'
The Guardian
16 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Transfer trouble and boardroom bother: vexed Newcastle face a puzzled future
'If you want to understand Newcastle you first need to understand its place in the world – that is, a very long way from anywhere. The next major city is Leeds, two hours drive to the south … London feels very far away.' If Eddie Howe can only hope his prospective signings do not stumble across the Rough Guides introduction to England's northern cities, Newcastle's manager may also reflect that it was not supposed to be like this. The days when the club's recruitment strategy was often a victim of its geographical isolation were supposed to have ended four years ago when Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund obtained the keys to St James' Park. In October 2021 there was a sense of giddiness in the Tyneside air as Amanda Staveley, the then Newcastle director and minority owner who played a key role in convincing one of the world's richest sovereign wealth funds to buy the club from Mike Ashley, settled back into a sofa at the city's leafy Jesmond Dene House hotel and spoke of soaring ambition and trophies galore. Since then a series of leading players including Alexander Isak, Sandro Tonali and Bruno Guimarães have signed for Newcastle, Howe's team are in the Champions League for the second time in three years and are the holders of the Carabao Cup, their first domestic trophy for 70 years. Rather less positively, Isak is doing his utmost to force through a move to Liverpool, a slew of big names have turned Howe down in favour of relocating to London or Manchester this summer and Newcastle are seeking their third sporting director and second chief executive in three years. Oh and Staveley and her husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, are no longer around, after being ousted in a boardroom power struggle early last summer. Staveley subsequently spoke of her 'heartbreak' and 'devastation' at that departure, insisting rumours of a planned exit were 'absolute rubbish'. Thirteen months on, Newcastle's chair, Yasir al-Rumayyan, and the rest of the Riyadh-based Saudi ownership are perhaps realising that maybe she was more important to their Geordie project than they realised. Arguably almost everything that has subsequently gone wrong seems rooted in that parting of the ways. Crucially, Staveley and Ghodoussi were excellent communicators within a club where, at assorted levels, personal connections have since loosened and the Saudi ownership remain so remote that no representative of PIF has spoken to the UK football media. In contrast Staveley was big on the human touch, taking time to stop and chat to players, staff and, occasionally, reporters while also sending first-teamers regular text messages as she established rare trust with the instinctively wary Howe. Maybe Staveley sometimes over-promised. Isak's representatives certainly believe the striker was assured his £150,000-a-week wages would be boosted significantly last summer and the fallout is hurting Howe now. Yet given that Newcastle only narrowly avoided a potential points deduction and heavy fine after scrambling to comply with Premier League spending rules within hours of a key deadline last June, the club's decision to tell Isak he would have to be content with his current deal after all represented financial logic. Howe's problem was that a striker who would proceed to score 27 goals last season remained seriously annoyed. Indeed Isak, along with certain similarly sulky teammates, started the campaign badly and it took the manager's considerable man-management skills to talk them round. It did not go unnoticed that, after the Carabao Cup triumph, Isak's body language turned uninterested again. Even so, the Swede had three years on his contract and there was a – misplaced – sense that a supposedly 'laid-back' character would not 'rock the boat', let alone skip a pre-season tour of south east Asia, particularly as he was poised to be offered an improved contract this summer. Instead Liverpool's interest turned the head of a striker said to be disappointed that there is still no sign of a much-vaunted new training ground at a club where a long-awaited, and much-delayed, decision as to whether Newcastle will revamp St James' Park or build a new stadium has again been postponed. Sign up to Football Daily Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football after newsletter promotion At a time when, given the constraints of profitability and sustainability rules, the art of selling is just as important as buying players, moving Isak to Liverpool for £120m-plus this month makes sense, permitting Howe to restock a talented but slender squad. The real puzzle is the lack of honest springtime conversations with Isak that might have allowed Newcastle to force an auction involving Liverpool, Arsenal et al before using their handsome profit to source an elite replacement. Instead Liam Delap, João Pedro, Hugo Ekitiké and now, perhaps, Benjamin Sesko have slipped through the net, preferring to move to London or Manchester. Newcastle, though, is not exactly Siberia and might have proved an easier sell had the Saudis swiftly appointed a successor to Darren Eales, who announced his resignation as chief executive 11 months ago after a blood cancer diagnosis. Eales finally seems poised to be replaced by the Canadian former Real Madrid executive David Hopkinson, but Paul Mitchell's abrupt departure 'by mutual consent', announced in late May, dictates that Newcastle have spent the transfer window without a sporting director. Mitchell, who succeeded Dan Ashworth last July, left without signing a player after kicking off his tenure by declaring that the transfer strategy was 'unfit for purpose' and the manager needed 'to evolve'. An uneasy truce with Howe eventually ensued but, less than 24 hours after Mitchell and the manager met Rumayyan for a post-season planning summit, his impending exit was announced. Throw in the enduring silence from Saudi Arabia and it is easy to understand why a footballer's agent might tell his client that, although Howe is clearly a brilliant coach, Newcastle look a bit dysfunctional right now. Geography may no longer be the main reason why top players steer clear of Tyneside.
