Watford ‘eye’ move for £15m Newcastle United defender as Chelsea reject £40m West Ham bid for Toon-linked ace

Here, we round-up all the latest stories that have emerged from St James’ Park and beyond:

Newcastle United ‘in talks’ with Watford over defender exit

According to the Northern Echo, Newcastle United and Watford are in talks over a potential loan move for Jamal Lewis. Lewis has struggled for regular game time since his £15m move to the north east and could be set to switch St James’ Park for Vicarage Road this summer.

Watford have shown interest in signing the 25-year-old on-loan as they aim to improve on a disappointing 11th place finish in the Championship last season. Lewis, meanwhile, wasn’t named in Newcastle’s match day squad for their 3-3 draw with Aston Villa in Philadelphia.

Chelsea reject bid for Magpies-linked midfielder

Chelsea have reportedly rejected a £40m bid from West Ham for Conor Gallagher. Gallagher’s future at Stamford Bridge is currently up in the air with the midfielder keen to impress new boss Mauricio Pochettino during pre-season.

However, Gallagher has multiple suitors for his signature and could be allowed to leave the Blues during the window. Whilst Newcastle have been credited with an interest in the midfielder, Sandro Tonali’s arrival means a centre-midfielder is no longer a priority and the Hammers are now favourites to land his signature should he leave Stamford Bridge.

West Ham have also been linked with a move for Southampton’s James Ward-Prowse.

Premier League 2 announce format change

Newcastle United Under-21’s will compete in a revamped Premier League 2 next season following a restructuring of the competition. Instead of two divisions, from next season, Premier League 2 will feature just one big division of 26 Category One academy teams.

Each team will play 20 regular season games with fixtures for those based on seeding groups and randomly allocated games both home and away. Once all 20 games have been played, the bottom ten teams will be eliminated and a knockout play-off competition will begin with the team that finished 1st playing 16th, 2nd playing 15th etc before crowning an overall champion at the end of this process.

Fixtures for this revamped competition are set to be announced next week.