Reports from Spain are saying that Newcastle have agreed a fee with Deportivo over their 22 year old striker Francisco Jiménez Tejada or more familiarly Xisco. Fee is thought to be around 7 million euros plus another 3 million euros in clauses.

No official confirmation has been released yet but Deportivo’s coach Miguel Ángel Lotina has apparently confirmed after Deportivo’s victorious start to the campaign against Real Madrid that he is aware of the transfer. Deportivo fansite Riazor.org confirms that the player is flying to Newcastle to pass his medical.

Judging by the reactions from a lot of Deportivo fans he is quite highly rated by them. Their fans describe him as a strong striker who is surprisingly quick, technically gifted and one of their biggest talents.

We’ll wait and see what happens but surely it can’t be too bad if it keeps Shola and Smith out of the team.

Tomorrow’s Daily Mail is actually expecting Smith to complete his Everton move sooner than later. Get your party hats out!

Martin Atkinson of Leeds takes charge of his 1st ever Tyne-Wear derby and his 2nd Newcastle match of the season at the Stadium of Light today.

He was last on a Newcastle game in October as we beat Everton 3-2 at St James’ Park, and last on a Sunderland game as they lost 1-0 at Old Trafford to Manchester United in September.

Phil Dowd of Stoke-on-Trent will take charge of our game at the Madejski Stadium against Reading this afternoon. Last season he took charge of 2 of our games, defeats at Chelsea and Fulham.

Martin Atkinson of Leeds in West Yorkshire will take charge of our game with Everton at St James’ Park today. It will be his first Newcastle game of the season, with the last time he refereed us being our 2-0 defeat to Blackburn in the final home game of last season.

Howard Webb of Rotherham in South Yorkshire will take charge of our Carling Cup 3rd Round tie against Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium in North London tonight. It’ll be the second time this season Webb has refereed us, having been in the middle for our 0-0 draw with Aston Villa in August.

In The Independent on Friday, Newcastle United Chairman Chris Mort sat down for a rare interview with Michael Walker and spoke fairly candidly about his new position in the North East. Freddy Shepherd’s successor explained some of the reasons why he had landed up here, touched on the Kieron Dyer subject and unearthed some interesting pieces of information about the previous regime. As has been the case since his arrival it was refreshing to hear from Mr. Mort, so if you missed it, why not give it a once-over now and let us know what you think about the job the new man in charge has been doing since he arrived in June?

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Welcome to the latest feature on Newcastle-Online.com. About 2-3 times every week we aim to give you the lowdown on what the local and national papers are saying about Newcastle United as well as snippets of how they think they’ve performed after Premiership matches. Today features Big Sam on a new captain and a great first win, Viduka on his previous club Middlesbrough and rumours of Kieron Dyer failing a West Ham medical.

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After a period of concern amongst some Newcastle fans, new signings now appear to be imminent with the transfers of Alan Smith and Caçapa apparently well advanced, and Ivica Dragutinović also rumoured to be signing in the near future. Whilst many Newcastle fans will be familiar with Alan Smith, the latter two players are less well-known. So who are they? What are their credentials? Read on, and find out.

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With recent newspaper reports over the last few days, hinting at some degree of discord between Sam Allardyce and the new regime over a lack of transfer funds, tonight’s Talk-In was going to be interesting, if a little cynical that any difficult questions would be omitted, and perhaps they were, for there was no mention of Sam’s relationship with owner Mike Ashley, or new chairman, Chris Mort. However, despite this, it proved to be quite interesting, as Allardyce shared some of his thoughts on his vision for the club.

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Also confirmed to the stock market today was the sale of Scott Parker to West Ham United. What makes the deal interesting is the fact that Newcastle will receive £6.5m for the player however the deal does include a further £500,000 contingent on future appearances bringing the total fee up to the suggested £7m.

Confirmation this morning that Freddy Shepherd has sold his shareholdings in Newcastle United football club leaving Mike Ashley with a 70% holding in the club and only needing 5% more to gain full control of the club. The following statement was released to the stock market this morning.

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Sky Sports News are currently reporting that Joey Barton is set to complete his move to Newcastle United from Manchester City on Monday… as long as Scott Parker moves to West Ham United.

Newcastle already reportedly accepted an undisclosed free from the Hammers for Parker and his representives have been talking to the London club all week in the hope of a deal being done for the former Chelsea man.

According to Sky Sports, Barton is ready to come to Tyneside as Allardyce’s first signing at the club but the deal is apparently dependent on Parker’s move to West Ham which could go through in the morning.

So, what are your thoughts on this development? Ready to see the back of Parker? What about Barton, do you want to see him in a Black and White shirt? Have Your Say.

Newcastle United have confirmed that four senior players will be seeking new clubs. The players are Titus Bramble, Craig Moore, Olivier Bernard and Pavel Srnicek. Meanwhile, Oguchi Onyewu will return to Standard Liege having failed to impress while on loan. Such departures would appear to signal that new manager Sam Allardyce intends to strenghten areas of the defence over the summer. (more…)

After keeping quiet about football’s worst kept secret for a week, Sam Allardyce has been confirmed as the next Newcastle United manager, after he agreed a three-year deal, reported to be worth £3 million a year. (more…)

Newcastle-Online received this text in an email this morning. We offer it as it is, without comment, but the level of detail makes us believe this is a credible document.

[Douglas, these are my notes on this mornings call. Type them up and get them over to the ghost writer, and tell him I’ve got a new title for the seasons diary. I want to call it ‘Taming the Biggest Job in the World, the managerial genius of Big Sam’.]

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