Here are the major news stories associated with the Newcastle club for today – in no particular order of priority.

The highlight for us today is we are linked with two very good players. One is Deco – who continues to be linked with Newcastle because Barcelona would like to sign Frank Lampard from Chelsea – and therefore would be able to let a central midfielder go.

Also linked with us is Gabriele Heinze of Manchester United who seems willing to leave Manchester for more regular football next season. We think it will be difficult to capture either player because – for one thing – we cannot offer them European football next season.

The news continues to be that Mike Ashley would like to attract a world class player to Newcastle before the transfer window ends in August. Once player we are linked with is Deco of Barcelona and since we’ve been in contact with Barcelona for Edmilson and Gudjohnsen we hope some progress on Deco may have been made. We have a Newcastle Transfer Update this morning on Deco.

DecoWe have a piece today asking what is Newcastle’s best strike partnership next season. Most think that Mark Viduka and Michael Owen will be first choice but probably Sam will use some rotation system to keep the players fresh and on their toes. With four good strikers Sam also has some good choices during games – where he will be able to impact a game by changing his strikers accordingly.

Mark VidukaNews today that Newcastle may be after Gabriele Heinze from Manchester United and we run a Newcastle Transfer Update story on Gabriele. We think it will be difficult to capture Heinze because he wants European football and we think it would be difficult right now to attract him to Newcastle. However, Sam Allardyce has a good relationship with Alex Ferguson and competition is from Liverpool and maybe Real Madrid. Ferguson would not want Heinze to end up at Liverpool.

Gabrielle HeinzeAustralia just about made it through against Oman in the Asian Cup when Everton’s Tim Cahill scored a very late winner to save Australia from embarrassment. Mark Schwarzer in goal had a good game and saved his country with a string of good saves. Next up for Australia is Iraq on Friday before their final group game against Thailand on Monday. Rumor has it that Roy Keane is interested in taking Mark Schwarzer to Sunderland for next season.

Tim CahillHere’s some funny (or even stupid) football quotes for today from commentator Kevin Motson – this is to lighten up the day