Did Tiote really turn down an offer from Chelsea?

Posted on March 1st, 2011 | 32 Comments |

The "Lion King" in action.
The "Lion King" in action.
Of course, fairly recent Newcastle United signing, Cheik Tiote, has been a big success since he joined the club from Dutch club, FC. Twente in the summer.

The player, who has been on the radar of the club ever since he was spotted by Chris Hughton on a scouting trip for Kevin Keegan in 2008 (when Tiote was playing at Netherlands club, Roda JC), has been a colossus in the defensive midfield role at Newcastle. Statistically, the team has been noticably more sucessful on average with him on the pitch than they are without, which was noticable during the midfielder’s enforced suspensions through picking up five yellow cards, and also for a straight sending off in Newcastle United’s FA Cup tie with Stevenage. This success has recently led to the club agreeing no less than a 6 1/2 year contract with the player, with, supposedly, much improved terms and conditions including a wage rise thought to be something around £50,000 per week.

However, this undoubted success has fuelled much specultion on whether massive clubs are circulating with the aim of making an offer for the player, and whether Newcastle United’s owner, Mike Ashley, would resist a substantial offer for the him. This speculation has been especially rife since Ashley accepted an offer of £35 million from Liverpool for another Newcastle United player,  Andy Carroll in the last knockings of the January transfer window.  The renegotiation of Tiote’s contract has put forward vigously as a sign that despite the Carroll sale, Mike Ashley is still committed to building the club with investment in improved contracts to those who have impressed in black and white.

Which brings us to recent speculation that Newcastle United recently received an offer from Chelsea for Tiote, and that the player himself turned him down. This story purportedly came from the player himself. However, after spending much time reading all the ones I could find, I can’t find a quote anywhere from the player himself that Chelsea made an offer, or that he turned the alleged offer down.

On actual quotes from Tiote himself, this is all I could find:

“If you come to a new club in a new country it is important there is a good atmosphere at the club.” “As soon as I arrived here the players made me welcome. They helped me settle in and meant I could do a good job on the pitch.

“Newcastle life is good for me. It is not like London – London is too busy, there are too many people. Newcastle is not so busy. That makes it easier to focus on your job. For me it is important. I would like to be here for a few years. I can learn here.

“I feel settled here. I enjoy it here. The fans are good and the new manager likes me. The club has looked after me and I do my best for the team and the fans.

“I made sacrifices to be a player, I had to leave my family, my six brothers and three sisters. It was so difficult.

“Now I have a better life and I am happy for that but I had to be focused. In Africa the young boys want to go out all the time, they want to do something different.

“But for me the being different was to make it as a professional. To do that I had to leave that life. Going back would have been like saying, ‘I lose’. I don’t do losing. I want to win every challenge, every tackle, anything.

“When I was little my dad told me, ‘If you want to have something in your life, you have to work hard’.

“My dad is dead now but I think he would be proud of me.”

As mentioned above, there is nothing in any of that from Tiote about an actual bid from Chelsea, or on how he turned down any kind of alleged offer made to him, and this was also the case in all the other stories I read. If any readers out there DID actually see any quotes with Tiote actually saying that Chelsea made an offer for him, and that he turned them down, I would very much like to see the source.

Finally, why it would be understandable for many clubs to be interested in signing such a fine player as Cheik “Lion King” Tiote, I would have thought that Chelsea are the one club who already have two players in the Tiote mould, the brilliant Michael Essien and his precocious understudy, John Obi Mikel, already within their ranks. Like several other stories about the club coming out recently, there is something quite suspicious about this one.

NUFCBlog Author: workyticket workyticket has written 1093 articles on this blog.

Related Posts:

  • No Related Posts


32 Responses

  1. TOON have been crying out for a m/player of his type/class for years,hes a gem imo

  2. Sorry lads, totally unrelated. But just seen the funniest comment I have ever seen on sporting life website from formula 1 god Bernie. Bear with me.. He states it is viable to have the formula 1 postponed race in Bahrain rearranged for august .. Apparently the 54 deg heat would not be a problem !!
    What he forgot about is that it will be ramadam over here, so no food or drink in daylight hours..
    What a muppet.. Sorry, hope I didn’t interior your banter..roll on 2020..!!

  3. icedog says:
    March 1, 2011 at 8:56 pm

    “TOON have been crying out for a m/player of his type/class for years,hes a gem imo”

    Mine too, Ice. I saw a £3 million Tiote playing at the World Cup alongside a £25+ million player called Yaya Toure, who I rate a great deal, and he didn’t look out of place at all. I knew that Hughton had picked up a massive bargain then.

  4. ali bribafifa says:
    March 1, 2011 at 9:01 pm

    “Sorry, hope I didn’t interior your banter”

    No worries, Ali. I’m a big Formula One fan, though not a big fan of the way it’s run sometimes.

  5. agents are as bad as rags in starting these storeys,and a few others maybe,doubt we will ever get to bottom of it

  6. tiote mentions london, papers had been linking him with chelsea = OMG Tiote rejects chelsea.

    the classic 2 + 2 = 9 from the media

  7. know that there was a few wondered if he could handle EPL, class always comes through given time he didnt even need that

  8. Good post. I searched high and low for confirmation that he’d actually turned down an offer from Chelsea but never found it. Some press publications seem to be taking it as fact though.

  9. I dont think an offer came but he may well have been advised by his agent that if he wanted to wait until the summer like everyone else he might find himself wanted by one of the london clubs like Chelsea or the Arse. He has obviously thought bugger that and signed up.

    This is a good way to start spending the cash from Andy.

  10. My bet is that if an offer approaching 15 – 20 mill comes along then he’s outahere…

  11. HUGH aye but it sells more rags if you “add”a bit of sh@t.
    got mr rat yet mate?

  12. Hugh de Payen says:
    March 1, 2011 at 9:13 pm

    “Good post. I searched high and low for confirmation that he’d actually turned down an offer from Chelsea but never found it.”

    Thanks Hugh. I spent feckin’ ages trawling through different searches too, but I couldn’t find anything much different from what I quoted above.

  13. Hugh, I tend to agree with you mate, it’s just simply down to the fact that I don’t trust Mike Ashley.

  14. Munich, I don’t trust Ashley either (at least not yet) but if Tiote blankly refuses to put a transfer request in, it would make it difficult (or at least more difficult) for Ashley.

  15. Agreed Hugh, but Ashley has ways and means. He didn’t become a gazillionaire by being nice and cuddly…

  16. HUGH just let you know feb is worse month for rat movement,that when alfa male throws all other male rats out to start up there own group

  17. Hugh de Payen says:
    March 1, 2011 at 9:24 pm

    “Just to stay with the rat for a moment, the council suggested we get a cat,”

    So did I, Hugh, but you want a real genocidal maniac like my “Tiddles” used to be, not the ones who just sit around the fire getting fatter all day.

  18. Worky, yeah we used to have a cat that hated anything that breathed a few year back. Unfortunately our current one just, as you say, sits around the fire getting fatter all day.

    Ice, I just hope he’s cleared off as I have an odd set of morals in that respect. If my cat was any good and killed the rat, it wouldn’t bother me because I’d tell myself it was a ‘natural order’. But I don’t fancy gassing it or whatever.

  19. With Tiote, it could always be something his agent leaked to try and put pressure on Newcastle to give him a good contract.

    Or not. I’m not fully convinced, I admit.

  20. Hugh de Payen says:
    March 1, 2011 at 9:54 pm

    “With Tiote, it could always be something his agent leaked to try and put pressure on Newcastle to give him a good contract.”

    I agree that it could be, Hugh. I also have a bit of a theory that there’s some kind of NUFC PR “Shadowplay” going on with some of the stories like this one too.

    Or not. I’m not fully convinced either way, I admit. :-)

  21. With lots of different entities that could be trying to ‘use’ PR to their advantage it’s hard to tell.

    If only it was as a simple as the old “The Chairman and the board fully back the manager”. Because we all now know that’s a prelude to sacking the manager.

  22. Nice to see some research being done, worky, rather than regurgitating rumours as fact.

    I also did some research on this topic, as I do when all such stories appear in the tabloids.

    As far as I could tell the story started in The Sunday Sun – which was a story about how Tiote had chosen Newcastle over Real Madrid. That story mentioned that there’d been a move by Chelsea rejected. It didn’t say who had rejected it, the club or the player.

    It was then picked up by The Daily Mail, which turned it into Tiote rejecting Chelsea overtures on deadline day. They’d already ran a story saying that Chelsea were interested in Tiote, so I presume they needed to show how their earlier story was valid.

    I think it was in the Express that a few comments about life in Newcastle was better for Tiote than life in Newcastle. That has been interpreted as confirming that Chelsea were turned down by Tiote.

    No official confirmation has been made anywhere that Chelsea enquired about Tiote (or Real Madrid for that matter). And I can’t find the full text of the interview where Tiote talks about why he prefers Newcastle as a city – or even the context in which the comments were made.

    It all points to a media beat up.

    You’ll find the Jose stuff is of a similar nature.

  23. Hugh and worky: re your thinking about PR and leaks. Don’t rule out the newspapers making it all up to sell papers. They do it. They create smoke where there is no fire.

  24. the fact of the matter is had chelsea or any other top 3 club in this country or similar clubs in germany/spain & italy been in for him then that’s where he’d be plying his trade today – & that will probably still apply for next season.

    worky’s reet – it’s just poor spin coming oot the club.

    it’s all part of conning the fans into buying fat boys 10 year season ticket scam.

  25. So whats new ?

    We are constantly bombarded with made up nonsense or half truths by the media.

    Think our genius duo, figured seeing they missed the boat with Enrique, felt a bit of panic and decided to tie this guy up for the foreseeable future.

    How long will it take for the penny to drop, that they need a top football guy making decisions, that between them it`s the blind leading the blind, as for Pardew, he`s a “walkie talkie” joke.