Newcastle booked private jet to get Boubakary Soumare before Lille midfielder turned down £35m transfer
STEVE BRUCE revealed Newcastle had a France-bound private jet booked up to clinch Boubakary Soumare for £35million – before the Lille midfielder turned them down.
The Magpies boss thought he had landed his main January target last weekend after the Ligue 1 club accepted a bid.
But the highly-rated Soumare, 20, snubbed a move to Tyneside in order to seal a move elsewhere else in the summer.
Bruce said: “We had a plane booked to go and meet him but the boy changed his mind.
“We thought last weekend we had a chance to bring him in.
“We had a bid accepted and got past the club but unfortunately the player wanted to stay where he was.”
The 59-year-old continued: “I think with him it was just to keep his options open.
“He’s only young and there’s a lot of top clubs who have been linked with him.
“At the death, it was, ‘We want to keep our options open until the summer’.
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“He changed his mind – otherwise I wouldn’t have gone on a goose chase.
“I don’t want anyone to be cynical about this bid. We thought we were really, really close.”
Toon have added Nabil Bentaleb, Valentino Lazaro and Danny Rose to their ranks over the past month, the latter having arrived from Tottenham yesterday for the remainder of the season.