Newcastle are plotting a raid of Manchester United in the January transfer window, according to reports.
Eddie Howe was confirmed as the Magpies’ new manager last weekend and the former Bournemouth boss has plenty of work to do.
He inherits a side which has yet to win a Premier League game this term and sits five points adrift of safety.
Howe has already turned his attention towards the January transfer window, when Newcastle will hope to bolster their squad in several areas.
Their new manager is looking at players with Premier League experience who can hit the ground running in a relegation battle.
Three fringe members of the Manchester United squad have emerged as potential targets for Newcastle.
According to The Sun, Jesse Lingard, Donny van de Beek and Dean Henderson feature prominently on their wish list for January.
All three players have struggled for game time so far this season and would presumably be open to a move away.
Henderson is growing increasingly frustrated with a lack of game time and is reportedly eyeing an exit.
Lingard would presumably welcome the chance to play regular football ahead of the 2022 World Cup, and could bring forward his departure from Old Trafford before his contract expires next summer.
And Van de Beek has never been a prominent part of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s team and is thought to be desperate to resurrect his career elsewhere.
“We are preparing for the January transfer window,” Amanda Staveley, a Newcastle director, said earlier this week.
“It's not a window we would ordinarily want to invest in, because you probably don't get the right deals, but that's something that is important at the moment.
“It would have been an easy decision for us not to buy the club, just to wait until post-Christmas and post-January window and see where the club was in the league, and then make the acquisition.
“That would have been the safe investment bet, but we didn't do that. We decided, if we didn't do it now, it wasn't going to happen and we had to take that risk.
“We took that risk because the club was sitting in 19th position at the time and Eddie took the job knowing there was that risk.”
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