By admin 
Newcastle United appear to be looking for a new center defender.
Eddie Howe has stated that he is looking for another first-team signing after making three this summer.
With options behind Fabian Schar and Sven Botman not very compelling, the majority of the players linked with a move to St James’ Park are center defenders.
Joachim Andersen is one of them.
This summer, the Crystal Palace player has been linked with a move to Newcastle, and there is allegedly hope on Tyneside that the Eagles would decrease their £40 million asking price.
Palace manager Roy Hodgson has now issued an update.
According to Roy Hodgson, losing players like Andersen would be a devastating blow.
Indeed, another Palace player and England defender Marc Guehi has been mentioned as a possible replacement.
Nonetheless, the Selhurst Park club has already lost star Wilfried Zaha to Galatasaray, another player linked with Newcastle.
Given this, Hodgson believes that losing any further key players would be a “bitter blow.”
“It would be a bitter blow now if we had to start the season with other of our top players being tempted away from us, or other clubs coming in and persuading Crystal Palace to sell them,” the former England manager stated on Friday (via the Evening Standard).
“We have no desire to sell any of those players, and we cannot rule out the possibility that other clubs will be interested in players of that caliber.”
Newcastle’s optimism may be misplaced.
It’s puzzling why Palace would drop their asking price for such an important player in Andersen.
Despite their desire to sign Odilon Kossounou from Bayer Leverkusen, Hodgson has already recognized that his squad is lacking in numbers.
It makes little sense to want to make life easy for Newcastle by signing one of their two first-choice central defenders.
That doesn’t mean the Magpies can’t move, but hoping Palace makes things easy seems weird.