It’s not yet known whether £50m player actually wants to join Newcastle this summer

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Newcastle United’s move for Nicolo Barella may not be as straight-forward as first thought when the news broke.

When the Nicolo Barella to Newcastle story came out last night many Newcastle fans felt like the deal was practically done. The Telegraph suggested that talks were well underway between the Magpies and Inter Milan, but now the dust has settled, it turns out it may not be as nailed-on as we thought.

Indeed, Fabrizio Romano poured cold water on the links between Newcastle and Barella almost immediately on Twitter, doubling down on that later on his YouTube channel.

Inter will want more than the £50m Newcastle are offering for Barella

Now The Daily Mail aren’t convinced on the move either, suggesting that the player himself hasn’t decided if he’d even be interested in the move.

It’s an understandable angle, and one that was parroted by Fabrizio Romano. Barella is Inter through and through so convincing him to switch Milan for Newcastle could be very tricky.

The report also says that sources inside Newcastle are aware that the deal for Barella could be ‘difficult’ to do. It’s understood that Newcastle are preparing a £50million bid, but Inter will likely want more, so there’s that hurdle to jump before they even get to trying to convince the 43-times capped Italy international to leave his boyhood club.

While these reports may sound negative, they’re really just there to temper expectations in case it doesn’t go through. As with every transfer there are a lot of moving parts and things could do disastrously wrong at any moment. Even if that Telegraph piece had reported that we’d all but signed Barella there would still be scope for it to fall apart.

Newcastle like to stay away from prying eyes while doing their deals

How far along Newcastle are in the process will only really be known to those involved in the move. We know how PIF operate in the transfer market, they like to keep deals quiet until there’s something real to talk about.

Deals for Kieran Trippier, Nick Pope and Alexander Isak practically came out of nowhere. The only one of those we had any real inkling about was Isak, and we all thought the club had moved on from him so we’d given up on seeing him at Newcastle by the time he was announced.

So for now, let’s just relax and let this one play out and enjoy the ride, because I can see this one running on for a couple of weeks yet as Newcastle could be about to open the floodgates for other clubs to try and take Barella away from inter.