Bafetimbi Gomis looked assured to sign for Newcastle a few days ago, but now the situation has got more complicated and more confusing.
Marseille are generally renowned for keeping all their transfer dealings out of the press, at least the players they sign, not necessarily those that they sell. Obviously this is why any potential move for Gomis has been kept very quiet. To help us all out, here are the facts:
1) Newcastle and Lyon have agreed a fee for the transfer of Bafetimbi Gomis of €8m plus €2m in bonuses. (Jean Michel Aulas, the Lyon President confirmed this in an interview with L’Equipe at the weekend)
2) Lyon will pull the deal in place with Newcastle if they receive a better offer elsewhere. (Lyon general transfer policy)
3) Newcastle’s Sporting Director Joe Kinnear admitted ‘other clubs are interested’ in Gomis and that the situation ‘is difficult’ because ‘when [we] bid someone bids something else’ in an interview with Sky Sports.
4) Bafetimbi Gomis confirmed via Twitter that he ‘had agreed with Newcastle (in terms of contract) 2 weeks ago.’
5) There are two issues holding up the deal. First of all is the 5% portion of the transfer fee which Saint Etienne (Bafe’s former club) are owed from his transfer from Lyon to Newcastle. Lyon were only made aware of this late on and decided that they wanted Newcastle to pay 105% instead of the 100% fee they had already agreed. This issue has reportedly however been resolved.
6) Lyon refuse to pay agents fees of €800k and demand that Newcastle pay them. (RMC)
7) There was an attempt to solve the aforementioned issue yesterday but there is no news as to how that meeting went. Whether or not this has been resolved and that Gomis is now 100% okay to travel to Newcastle to complete the deal or that this stumbling block is still there is unclear.
8) There is also another theory, from French newspaper But! today that Bafetimbi Gomis and his agents are currently delaying the move to Newcastle because they would prefer the player move to Marseille.
9) Marseille’s Sporting Director, Jose Anigo confirmed that signing Bafetimbi Gomis was ‘a possibility’ last weekend.
10) Despite Jean Michel Aulas’ jibes that Marseille do not have the funds to sign Bafetimbi Gomis, he is generally accepted as being wrong. The DNCG approved one of Marseille’s highest ever budgets this summer.
11) Lyon newspaper Le Progres claims 100% that Bafetimbi Gomis wants to stay in France and prefers a move to Marseille over all others.
12) However, Bafetimbi Gomis made a series of potentially puzzling comments on social networking site Twitter today:
[tweet https://twitter.com/BafGomis/status/364686621846671360]
This tweet translates as: ‘Thank you for all of your messages. A year from today I hope that this year has a lot of good things in store for me and a lot of goals, HERE or elsewhere.’
This suggests that Bafetimbi Gomis is still open to remaining at Lyon next season, or potentially that he will stay in France (Marseille). Either way he does not seem certain himself.
He then proceeded to tweet in a fashion to suggest he was going to sign for Newcastle. In an open plea to Newcastle fans he apologised for the delay in his transfer:
[tweet https://twitter.com/BafGomis/status/364699844234842112]
I think one can assume that nobody, even Bafe, knows whether or not the player will sign for Newcastle judging by his tweets.
Marseille is a looming threat over this potential transfer to Newcastle and at the moment there is very little way of knowing if the agents fees will be sorted out.
