Naturally, Milner has changed from being a Thorp Arch academy product to a Premier League player who has appeared in 637 games. At the moment, the Brighton player is 16 appearances short of Gareth Barry’s record of 653.
The only member of Leeds’ roster with experience at both St. James’ Park and Elland Road is Darlow. However, there was one more player who had the opportunity to add Newcastle to his resume, which already had Leeds United.
Leeds was forced to abandon all hopes of moving to Tyneside, where he would have been able to play in the Premier League, as another team approached and completely destroyed Newcastle’s offer.
Ross McCormack shares details of Newcastle bid at Leeds
McCormack, a Scotland international, was a star at Leeds. The former striker played the most for Leeds of all the teams on his resume, making 157 games while captaining the team and tallying 58 goals.
Following four years at Elland Road and during Massimo Cellino’s first summer, McCormack claims that in 2014, Fulham made a £11 million deal for him, turning down Alan Pardew’s £5 million offer from Newcastle.
Indeed, there was interest from the Premier League. However, I encountered the identical issue when I travelled from Fulham to Villa. He remarked, “The Championship clubs that wanted me were prepared to give the club a higher salary.
Leeds United icon Mark Viduka picked the best goal of his career and it came way back in 2003
“More so than the Premier League teams, thus the decision was to either stay in your current position or transfer to another Championship club. Malaga and Newcastle were two examples. Malaga was £6 million or £7 million closer.
Then, presto—£11 million—that’s Fulham. “I knew I wouldn’t be going there because their offer was only £5 million, so I didn’t really think about going to Newcastle,” McCormack stated in an interview with Open Goal.
Other players that swapped Newcastle for Leeds, or vice versa
Other than Darlow and nearly McCormack, a lot of players have been traded between Leeds and Newcastle since 2000. As mentioned, two clear instances are Woodgate and Milner.
| Name | Date | From | To | Fee |
| Karl Darlow | 2023 | Newcastle | Leeds | £400,000 |
| Vurnon Anita | 2017 | Newcastle | Leeds | Free |
| Paul Huntington | 2007 | Newcastle | Leeds | Undisclosed |
| James Milner | 2004 | Leeds | Newcastle | £5m |
| Steven Caldwell | 2003 | Newcastle | Leeds | loan |
| Michael Bridges | 2003 | Leeds | Newcastle | loan |
| Jonathan Woodgate | 2002 | Leeds | Newcastle | £9m |
After leaving Fulham, where he was a star player, McCormack moved to Aston Villa, where his career took a turn for the worst. The striker had to move to Australia and Scotland to try to salvage what remained of his career.
A long way from ten years ago, when Cellino told McCormack he couldn’t train for Leeds in order to stay healthy and prevent injury, before he moved to Fulham and became the greatest transfer in the league.
