Steve Parish has described selling Marc Guehi as ‘impossible’ following developments over the last few days of the summer transfer window.
Newcastle United spent a month chasing a move for Guehi, but were frustrated in their attempts to land the England international. Despite being willing to pay a fee that would have broken their current transfer spend record, £63m for Alexander Isak back in 2022, Crystal Palace refused to accept an offer for the defender.
That left Newcastle having signed just two senior outfield players throughout the whole summer window and failing to land their number one target. Their interest was very well publicised throughout the final weeks of the window with Parish being very vocal on his desire to keep Guehi at the club, revealing it would have taken ‘superstar’ money in order to tempt them into selling.
Ultimately, the Magpies were unwilling to match Palace’s demands for Guehi and left the negotiating table empty handed. Speaking to Sky Sports about the defender and Newcastle’s interest, Parish revealed that selling Guehi was ‘impossible to consider’ in the final few days of the window because of circumstances out of their control:
“I don’t think the window worked out exactly the same format that we thought it would,” Parish said. “Maybe we thought at the beginning it’d be more likely that Marc Guehi went and we kept Joachim Andersen.
“We accepted that bid [for Andersen] which then made it very difficult really to sell both of our starting centre-backs in one window.
✍️ Newcastle United have three goals for the January transfer window and MUST be active in the market after two frustrating windows
👇 Here's my take on the situation #NUFC https://t.co/higqFhBDDy
— Joe Buck (@16joebuck) September 3, 2024
“That’s not to say it wasn’t still an outside possibility that we got to the right number but then Chadi Riad got injured. That doesn’t look quite as bad as it seems but it still left us very light and really made it impossible for us to consider at that point.”
Guehi remains an important part of Oliver Glasner’s plans and has captained the side in all four of their games so far this season. Despite ending the season on a high under their new boss, Palace are yet to win a Premier League game this season and have picked up just one point from their first three matches.
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