FROM THE SHIELDS GAZETTE<\/p>\n
NEWCASTLE United hope to clinch their fourth signing of the summer – Swansea City’s Neil Taylor – by the end of the week.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old was the subject of a £1m bid from the club earlier this month.<\/p>\n
And the fact that Taylor, a left-back, is not yet a Newcastle player has led to speculation that talks have broken down, though Everton, contrary to speculation, are not understood to be in for the Wales international.<\/p>\n
The Gazette understands United are still confident of signing Taylor, who held talks with Swansea chairman Huw Jenkins last week after returning from holiday.<\/p>\n
Swansea are reluctant to lose Taylor, an influential figure in their play-off winning campaign, but manager Brendan Rodgers has said he won’t stand in the way of any player who wants to leave the Liberty Stadium.<\/p>\n
Taylor wouldn’t be a replacement for Jose Enrique, who could leave this summer after refusing to discuss a new deal at St James’s Park.<\/p>\n
And the player – who started his career at Manchester City before moving to Wrexham, where he made his first-team debut – would have to accept he is not guaranteed first-team football.<\/p>\n
At newly-promoted Swansea, Taylor would be guaranteed a starting place in Rodgers’ side, who beat Reading at Wembley in the play-off final last month to win promotion to the Premier League.<\/p>\n
Taylor, however, missed that game through suspension, having been dismissed in their semi-final first-leg against Nottingham Forest at the City Ground.<\/p>\n
But the Welshman – who can also play on the left side of midfield, is understood to be ready to fight for his place at United, where highly-rated teenager Shane Ferguson is also vying for a place at left-back.<\/p>\n
Ferguson, 19, proved an able deputy for unsettled Enrique late last season <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
FROM THE SHIELDS GAZETTE NEWCASTLE United hope to clinch their fourth signing of the summer – Swansea City’s Neil Taylor – by the end of the week. The 22-year-old was the subject of a £1m bid from the club earlier this month. And the fact that Taylor, a left-back, is not yet a Newcastle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}