Defender banished from training amid Newcastle United transfer approach & £18m signing
Newcastle United’s failure to sign Marc Guehi appears to have had a negative knock-on effect for another Crystal Palace defender.
Guehi emerged as Eddie Howe’s number one target but Magpies sporting director Paul Mitchell called quits on the pursuit after Palace demanded in excess of £70million.
Newcastle accepted it was Guehi or bust and watched as the Eagles brought in two centre-backs on summer transfer deadline day - Maxence Lacroix from Wolfsburg for £18m and Trevoh Chalobah on a season-long loan deal from Chelsea.
Seeing Palace keep Guehi and add two new faces added salt into the wound, not only for Howe but for Rob Holding, too.
Holding has made just one appearance for Palace - a 3-0 defeat against Manchester United in the Carabao Cup - since joining from Arsenal last year and the suggestions are that be his last after being frozen out by Oliver Glasner.
Speaking earlier this month, Glasner said: "Rob is training individually at the moment. We will talk together – he knows the reason. But it is something that stays between Rob and me. Nothing public."
And plot has since thickened. Holding has unfollowed Palace on Instagram and deleted all but one post referencing them.
The 28-year-old actually came close to joining Newcastle on loan ahead of the 2020-21 season. Three-and-a-half-years on and Holding’s career is a standstill.
“It was all agreed, and the club thought it would be the best move for me,” Holding told The Telegraph. “But in the week before the Community Shield against Liverpool, the boss pulled me aside and said he wanted to check that I was focused for the weekend because I was needed. I told him that, wherever I am, I will always play my hardest and put 100 per cent in.
“I played the game, we did well and we won. And then on the Monday, he called me into his office. He said it made no sense to let me go if my end goal was to play here. He was saying I was going to play, that it was my shirt to lose. That was the confidence he put in me. I had a chance then to prove myself, to say to myself: ‘right, if I am going to stay, I am going to play and I am going to try to be the best player.’”