Newcastle co-owner Amanda Staveley lifts the lid on their pursuit of Jesse Lingard in January.

Newcastle co-owner Amanda Staveley has revealed the club were interested in signing Jesse Lingard from Manchester United during the January transfer window. 

The Magpies were the busiest Premier League team last month after spending £93million on Kieran Trippier, Chris Wood, Bruno Guimarães and Dan Burn as well as getting Matt Targett on loan from Aston Villa. 

Despite all those incomings, Newcastle did miss out on some big targets which included Lingard and Lille defender Sven Botman. 

Jesse Lingard was heavily linked with a move to Newcastle but the move failed to materialise 

Mehrdad Ghoussi (L) and Amanda Staveley (R) have both spoken on their transfer frustrations 

Joint-owner Mehrdad Ghodoussi spoke of the club’s frustrations during January due to clubs and agents ‘leaking information’. 

In an interview with The Athletic, he said: ‘We spoke to a lot of people and it was “ah, January, forget it.” It was hard. Agents were leaking information, selling clubs would leak, you’d see your name associated with god knows who. 

‘Not only was it a difficult window, but everybody was thinking we had money to throw around. We walked away from deals because of that. We can’t set a precedent that we are there to buy at any cost.’

Staveley mirrored those views and revealed Lingard was interested in joining Newcastle before the move failed to materialise in the latter stages of the month. She also revealed Botman is still interested in joining the the club. 

‘There were times when I was screaming at agents. I think Eddie heard me using a word I would never normally use,’ Staveley said. 

‘The point is, they were doing all of it themselves. 

‘We were also 19th going into the window. So we had that, an illiquid market and the complexity of COVID, which meant clubs didn’t want to sell because they didn’t know where their squads would end up. 

Staveley revealed Sven Botman is still interested in joining despite failing to sign him 

‘We had to encourage players — “we’ll be a safe place for you, we’ll deliver and grow”. Some desperately wanted to come to us, like Sven (Botman), who still does very much and has talked very openly about that.

‘Coming through all that showed us we can do it, that we can stick to our plan and if we get criticised on the last day for “oh, you’re going after Jesse (Lingard)”, well, Jesse wanted to come to us. We did everything. We never stopped. From the start to the finish, we did not stop working.’

Newcastle have been one of the in-form teams in the league since the transfer window closed and have since got out of the relegation zone after winning two of their three games since the turn of the month. 

They currently sit 17th in the Premier League and will be hoping to maintain their strong form when they travel to Brentford on Sunday.