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Newcastle Thought They Could Buy Bastian Schweinsteiger In 2008

There's nothing we love more than a stupid transfer decision made by a team we don't support, which is why we were delighted to find out that in 2008 Newcastle tried to buy Bastian Schweinsteiger. Really.

We bring you this very amusing item from the Birmingham Mail, in which former Newcastle assistant Terry McDermott talks about how he and Kevin Keegan decided to sell James Milner, which, again, involves Newcastle trying to buy Bastian Schweinsteiger in his prime.

"We sold him for 15 million quid.

"The story goes - and this is a true story - we didn't want him to leave but we needed to get other players in because we'd had a bid of 15 million quid.

"Kevin said 'if we sell him for 15 million quid, how are we going to replace him?'

"They said 'we've already got one - Schweinsteiger'. He's at Man United now but seven or eight years ago he was a superstar and they said we could get him.

Yes, Newcastle United thought they could buy Bastian Schweinsteiger at the height of his bleach-blonde, midfield-dominating powers.

Let's see how that went:

"The idea of accepting the bid of 15 million for Milner, which was a lot of money then, and then we're looking to get Schweinsteiger it's a no brainer.

"But after he's signed for Villa - the day after - we're trying to sign Schweinsteiger and the answer was 'absolutely no chance, it will cost you £50 million if you wanted to buy Schweinsteiger'.

"So we had no one to replace him. But he was irreplaceable anyway because he could play anywhere."

Sounds about right.

(H/T Birmingham Mail)

Contact The18 Staff Writer Sam Klomhaus at Klomhaus@The18.com or follow him on Twitter @SamKlomhaus

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