Harvey Barnes must choose his next club carefully amid Newcastle, Aston Villa and Spurs £25m transfer interest

Not many players score 13 goals in the Premier League and go down. Fewer still have an England cap to their name or a reputation as one of the nation’s most dangerous left-sided attackers. But then, Harvey Barnes is a bit different, and so was Leicester City’s relegation.

The Foxes’ fall has kicked off a feeding frenzy, what with a squad packed with players who really shouldn’t have gone down in the first place. There will be several substantial bidding wars taking place in the executive rooms around the King Power Stadium – and Harvey Barnes, believed to be worth something in the region of £25m, will be one of the biggest.

Four teams have been linked with the Leicester academy graduate’s signature so far – Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur, West Ham United and Aston Villa – but don’t be surprised if the list grow as the window wears on. 13 goals in a relegation season is the kind of statistic that earns you a lot of admirers.

But where should Barnes himself go? We aren’t psychic, and can’t know whether his priorities are European football, personal fulfilment or simply cold, hard cash – but we can look at how he’d fit tactically and technically into the four teams that seem to have become the favourites, and make our suggestion for the very best fit.

Newcastle United

The wide left role in Eddie Howe’s side had been the sole preserve of Alain Saint-Maximin for some time, but injuries and an apparent decline in his standing at St. James’ Park – there have been reports that the Magpies would be keen to sell the Frenchman – mean that Alexander Isak filled in for much of the second half of the season. The long and short of it is that Newcastle need someone to play wide left, and Barnes is on the shortlist.

Bayer Leverkusen’s Moussa Diaby may be the preferred option – if Paris Saint-Germain or Manchester United don’t come calling first – but Barnes seems like a good option on paper. The question is how well he meshes with the way their forward line has played under Howe so far – Barnes’ strength is playing quick give-and-gos and being the man onto the final ball, but the likes of Callum Wilson prefer to play off the shoulder and get the last pass for themselves.

Barnes is a relatively poor dribbler by top-tier standards and while he’s great at getting sharply to the byline and getting the ball across into dangerous areas, he works best when he’s running beyond a central striker or playing off a number ten who comes closer to him to enable the quick interchanges he’s so good at. That could work with Isak to a degree, but perhaps makes less sense with Wilson – unless Newcastle also buy a proactive number ten such as his current team-mate James Maddison.

In other words, Barnes is a fine player – but an awkward fit for Newcastle’s current crop of players. That doesn’t mean that they won’t make the purchases that would help him fit in, and Maddison has been very much on the Magpies’ radar as well. Fill that role effectively, and Barnes could slot right in.

Tottenham Hotspur

According to the bookies, Spurs are the least likely of our quartet to sign Barnes, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. Son Heung-Min has had the left flank on lockdown for several years now and despite somewhat diminished returns in the 2022/23 campaign, is still going to be incredibly hard to dislodge.

Unless, that is, Saudi Arabia comes calling. He’s been linked with a huge-money move to the Pro League in 2024 and that means that anyone behind him in the queue to play as the left forward at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium might not be waiting all that long. Still – Barnes will have better options that trying to compete for a starting spot with one of Spurs’ best players for a season, even if he would likely link up quite brilliantly with Harry Kane. Who may well not be there anyway, of course.

Aston Villa

The current bookies’ favourites to snag Barnes’ signature, Villa have chopped and changed their set-up a fair amounts since Unai Emery took the reins, switching between a 4-4-2 with Ollie Watkins and Emi Buendía up front, and 4-2-3-1 with Watkins as the spearhead.

The former would be a departure for Barnes, who has seldom played at his best in a midfield four. There’s no inherent reason that him bursting beyond Buendía with Watkins in the middle wouldn’t work, but his relative lack of dribbling ability does undercut how effective he can be coming from deeper positions.

The latter would work well as long as someone was playing the number ten role in concert with him, and Villa’s take on the three-man attacking midfield has typically been fairly narrow, which should suit Barnes’ playing style. While his heat maps show him starting from wide positions in midfield, he gets much closer to the box in the final third and as such he needs a man to come close to him in those positions to be at his most effective - but that could easily be arranged. Barnes could well be a good fit for Villa, but it would depend how they plan to line up next season – and that isn’t abundantly clear at this stage.

West Ham United

With European football secured courtesy of their Europa Conference League win in Prague, West Ham have given themselves the clout to get hold of players of Barnes’ stature despite a campaign which saw them spend an uncomfortable amount of time flirting with relegation.

Things started coming together towards the end of the season and while the departure of Declan Rice will be a blow for the Hammers, they have the right tactical set-up – the 4-2-3-1 Barnes works best in – and the right kind of supporting cast to be a great landing spot for the Leicester man. The increasingly impressive Lucas Paquetá is just the kind of player who should mesh well with Barnes and provide those one-two opportunities he needs.

There are two major downsides to West Ham as a destination – one, that they haven’t sorted their striker situation out yet, and as such it’s impossible to say whether their number nine would be a good match for Barnes’ game. Two, they tend to play slightly wider with players like Saïd Benrahma and Jarrod Bowen operating with a much more ball-carrying game and tending to stick closer to the touchline in the final third, meaning Barnes would be something of a departure for the club. That doesn’t mean his presence couldn’t be adjusted to, but if they expect him to hug the touchline and fire crosses in, they would be disappointed with the end result.

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So where should Barnes go to be at his best? We’d say it’s a draw between West Ham and Villa, with pros and cons to each option. Both would need to adjust their game to get the best from Barnes, but it wouldn’t be asking too much of either. Newcastle might end up being the kind of club he could flourish at, but would need to reshape their squad in certain ways this summer that may or may not happen. Spurs? We wouldn’t recommend it. Fighting for a starting spot with Son is to fight a losing battle.