What Newcastle recruitment source was saying privately about Harvey Barnes last week

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Harvey Barnes was finally confirmed as a Newcastle United player at the weekend and now it has been revealed what people inside the club think of him as a player.

Newcastle finally got their man as Harvey Barnes was announced as a new signing on Sunday a few hours before the Magpies kicked off their Premier League Summer Series campaign against Aston Villa.

Barnes had been on Eddie Howe‘s radar for a while and his scouting team, guided by Sporting Director Dan Ashworth compiled the data on 25-year-old before making their move.

A club source has spoken about what Barnes will bring to Newcastle

Now The Telegraph has shared what Newcastle were looking for in a new winger and just how close Barnes came to fulfilling all of the criteria.

Newcastle knew Allan Saint-Maximin was unsettled at Newcastle and that they would need to bring in a left-winger in the event that the Frenchman left this summer, however they didn’t want to break the bank on that position.

There was a checklist that the Newcastle scouts had to go through and Barnes ticked almost all boxes with The Telegraph’s article statiing: “The boxes ticked on the scouting report and confirmed in recruitment meetings were as follows: Goals? Yes. Pace? Yes Assists? Yes? Attitude? Yes. Room for improvement? Yes. Age? Yes. Desperate to come? Yes.”

Newcastle’s scouts noted that Barnes had everything they were looking for but the one box he didn’t tick for them was price. They knew he would cost the Magpies more than they were willing to spend on a winger, however, when concrete interest was shown in Saint-Maximin, the deal for Barnes gathered pace.

Barnes has everything it takes to be a big success for Eddie Howe

While, at the time of writing, Allan Saint-Maximin’s move to Saudi Pro League side Al Ahli hasn’t been officially confirmed, the fact that Harvey Barnes is a Newcastle player suggests that confidence is high that the deal will be completed.

Now Newcastle fans can look forward to seeing for themselves how brilliantly Barnes fits into Eddie Howe’s system and how the scouting team at Newcastle continues to come up with the goods for Howe.

So far the recruitment team haven’t failed since the PIF-backed takeover and Harvey Barnes has everything to be another big success on Tyneside.