Sean Longstaff had his "heart set" on a loan move to Rangers before his meteoric rise at Newcastle United last year.
The midfielder, who previously sampled Scottish football on-loan at Kilmarnock, has revealed he came close to joining Steven Gerrard at Ibrox in January 2019.
Longstaff, on the fringes of Rafa Benitez ' side at the time, was desperate to secure regular first-team football.
Days after Benitez revealed Rangers ' interest to the 22-year-old, however, he was handed his first Premier League start against Chelsea.
Longstaff said: “To be honest, I had been training since the start of the year and I was just champing at the bit, really, to play.
“Rafa took me into his office and I remember he said that Gerrard wanted to take me to Rangers and I sort of had my heart set on that a little bit.
"I was like 'I want to go! I want to go!' but he went ‘no, you can't go, you’ve got to wait another week or so’.
“Then he just pulled me in before Chelsea and said ‘you’re going to get a chance’.”
After winning the North East Football Writers’ Asssociation young player of the year award, he added to NUFC TV: “I was over the moon - it was the opportunity I wanted since I was a little kid.”.
