Eddie Howe could now land another ‘top target’ with £35m bid to be lodged in coming days

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Newcastle United could be about to beat two other Premier League sides to Harvey Barnes from relegated Leicester City.

According to a report in The Telegraph, later backed up by Fabrizio Romano via Twitter, Newcastle are set to launch a bid for Leicester winger Harvey Barnes with the player interested in a move to Tyneside.

While there is a disparity when it comes to his value, the two sides aren’t too far apart on this one. Leicester are said to want £40million while Newcastle are preparing a bid of £35million. A much smaller gap than the two alleged valuations of James Maddison.

Newcastle hope to have the Barnes deal done next week

That, along with Barnes’ desire to join Newcastle could see this one move pretty quickly with the Magpies hoping to have the deal tied up next week.

Barnes has other options with that Declan Rice money burning a hole in West Ham‘s pocket, and Aston Villa on a mission to add quality to their set-up, but neither can Champions League football and the type of project that is currently underway at Newcastle.

When the news broke last night many fans were seemingly underwhelmed by the idea of Harvey Barnes, but if you look at his stats, he is a baller. The 25-year-old racked up 13 goals for Leicester last season plus three assists in 40 appearances. That’s not bad going at all playing in a relegated side.

Having failed with an attempt to sign Barnes last summer, The Telegraph report has said that Barnes is Howe’s top attacking target after sewing up the deal for Sandro Tonali, so it seems like things are going well for Howe this summer.

Barnes may not be an exciting name but he’s an exciting player

Barnes will definitely add more quality to the side if he comes in. His goalscoring and assists figures are crazy for a player who rarely finds himself in the headlines. His numbers dwarf any of our wingers, in fact his goals tally last season alone (13) was more than Allan Saint-Maximin, Jacob Murphy and Anthony Gordon combined and that’s with Gordon’s three goals for Everton thrown in (nine).

So okay, it’s not a big exciting name like Federico Chiesa, but Newcastle could be about to sign a Premier League-proven player who scores and assists for fun. He hasn’t even peaked yet and he will have Eddie Howe to guide him to that peak.

If that’s not worth getting excited about I don’t know what is.