Deal struck: Newcastle paid £115 million for a striker at the manager’s insistence.

Football transfers can move pretty quickly with a player Newcastle United have an interest in stating his desire to leave yesterday and finding a new club today.

Yesterday we mentioned that VfB Stuttgart striker Serhou Guirassy, who Newcastle have been monitoring since before January had told his club that he wanted to leave this summer.

After a season in which he scored 28 goals in 28 Bundesliga games it was little surprise that the 27-year-old had garnered plenty of interest from other clubs.

With a release clause of just €17.5million (£14.8million) it was actually baffling that Newcastle didn’t make their move.

Romano suggests that the deal has been in the pipeline for a while and didn’t just happen overnight, which would explain Guirassy informing Stuttgart of his desire to leave.

Whether Newcastle made an approach, we’ll likely never know now, but it seemed like a low-risk no-brainer given our need for a striker to support Alexander Isak.

After so many links at the start of the year, it does feel like another missed opportunity, but chances are he was never really on Newcastle’s radar beyond the media speculation.