Steven Gerrard’s Rangers tried and failed to bring Sean Longstaff to Ibrox – now he’s a £50m Premier League star at Steve Bruce’s Newcastle United.
£50 million-rated Newcastle United midfielder Sean Longstaff has admitted that he had his ‘heart set’ on a move to Rangers before making his first-team breakthrough at St James’ Park, speaking to NUFC TV.
Back in the summer of 2018, a North Shields-born midfielder was on his way back to Tyneside after an impressive loan spell at Blackpool.
And, with the likes of Jonio Shelvey, Ki Sung-Yeung and Isaac Hayden ahead of him in the pecking order, Longstaff would have jumped at the chance to embark on another temporary switch. The chance to hone his talents under Steven Gerrard, one of the greatest midfielders of the 21st century, only made a potential move to Ibrox even more tempting.
“To be honest, I had been training since the start of the year and I was just champing at the bit really to play,” revealed the new North East Football Writer’s Player of the Year.
“(The Newcastle boss Rafa Benitez) took me into his office and I remember he said Gerrard wanted to take me to Rangers and I sort of had my heart set on that a little bit.
“I was like, ‘I want to go! I want to go!’ and he was like, ‘No, you can’t go. You’ve got to wait another week or so’ and then he just pulled me before Chelsea and said, ‘You’re going to get a chance’.”
True to his word, Benitez did eventually give Longstaff the opportunity to prove that he could be the first academy graduate to cement his place in Newcastle’s first team ranks since Paul Dummett.
These days, a man who has been compared frequently to fellow Geordie Michael Carrick due to his fabulous passing range is valued at around £50 million – a price-tag that put the breaks on a potential move to Manchester United last summer (Telegraph).
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