Newcastle United’s hopes of signing Mitchel Bakker appear to be over after talks with the Bayer Leverkusen defender collapsed.
Eddie Howe is keen to bring a new left back to Newcastle before next week’s deadline having missed out on Lucas Digne.
The Daily Mail reported last week that Newcastle had opened talks to sign Leverkusen ace Bakker to fill that role.
The Mail added that Newcastle had ramped up their efforts to sign Bakker by offering £14.5million to sign him.
Over the weekend, The Telegraph reported that a deal had been agreed in principle with Leverkusen, so talks with Bakker were on.
The Telegraph have offered an update today – and it’s not good news for Newcastle.
They claim that the deal with Leverkusen has now collapsed and a move to sign Bakker will ‘definitely not happen’.
This leaves Newcastle once again scrambling to pivot away from a main target to go and find somebody else.
Bakker, 21, started for Leverkusen in their 5-1 thumping of Augsburg over the weekend, which seemed like a sign that he wasn’t leaving.
Formerly of Ajax, Bakker played more than 40 times for Paris Saint-Germain following a 2014 move to the French giants.
Last summer, Bakker decided to leave in search of more first-team football, feeling he would receive that with Leverkusen.
Bakker has been in and out of the side though, which may have given Newcastle real hope of pulling off a deal.
That hasn’t happened though, and the deal is thought to be completely off ahead of next Monday’s transfer deadline.
Other left backs have been linked with Newcastle, such as Robin Gosens and Matt Targett, and we could now see both players feature prominently for the Magpies over the coming week with Bakker staying in Germany.
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