Not that we like gazumping the tabloid press with scurrilous stories about alleged shady meetings between contracted players, their “superstar” wives and the man who holds the purse strings at an unnamed (damn it, I put the name in the headline) Premiership club but I’m sure the Daily Mail didn’t really have an exclusive on it anyway.

Can we believe the stories that are emanating from that most respected of previously mentioned tabloids and the North East that Freddy Shepherd and the Beckham Siamese Twins have already had a very private (and serious) meeting about Senor Beckham trading in his sombrero and souvenir donkey and swapping them for a polo neck jumper and a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale in the land of Ant and Dec for next season?

It sounds almost too unbelievable to be true until we dig a little deeper. A site not a million miles from here ran an article a couple of weeks ago by one of the world’s finest football writers (ahem!) asking which club would want David Beckham? My conclusion at the time was that he wasn’t suited to or wanted by any of the top five clubs in the country and in view of his massive wages and need for a big enough stage to soothe his ego, Newcastle United would be the only logical destination for Beckham to come back to England to.

Some may cry that the Toon hierarchy are indulging in a bit of baseless rumour mongering to lift poor season ticket sales and with Michael Owen injured until 2007 it wouldn’t surprise any of us if this was true. What has changed since I wrote that article is that Ramon Calderon has taken over as Real Madrid president and installed Fabio Capello as head coach. Maybe Beckham has been told that the new coach is more than prepared to ditch the old guard at Madrid and no amount of shirt sales in the club shop will save the artist formerly known as Golden Balls. Who knows?

Three people know for sure what was discussed and unless either of the Beckhams or Mr Shepherd get on to State of the Game by e-mail tonight to tell us, we might all have to wait for tomorrow’s Daily Mail to see what other “facts” they’ve been able to unearth.

A million Geordies wait with baited breath.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 6th, 2006 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Newcastle United. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.