Newcastle United team – Exciting times ahead if sticking to club plan | OneFootball

Eddie Howe and Newcastle United have a massive challenge.

How do you compete with those Premier League clubs who as the rules currently stand, are allowed to spend far more money on transfer fees and wages?

It is  serious challenge for sure.

So what can Eddie Howe and Newcastle United do, to try and find a way of ‘cheating’ the system?

How do you recruit the necessary talent to compete with those clubs that can spend freely?

To get similar quality players, you can go down the path of signing ‘mature’ players, ones who only have a limited number of years left at the top level.

These kind of short-term signings are far from ideal if you overdo it.

If they are high quality older players then they will already be on big wages, other clubs will also be interested in such obvious signings who have shown their quality over a number of years. The reality is that pretty every time you do a deal for one of these type of players, to beat the competition you need to give them longer contracts than you want to, knowing full well that in the later years of that contract they will almost certainly not be good enough to still start regularly. Plus it will be very hard to then move them on, due to wages massively outstripping their true value by that point. Bottom line, you stack up older players on big wages who end up no longer good enough and who you can’t shift, never mind get a transfer fee for, to then help fund new signings.

The very first post-Ashley transfer window saw Newcastle United deep in trouble due to the previous owner and Steve Bruce, relegation looking all but certain.

As well as the chance to sign a 24 year old Bruno Guimaraes with an eye on hopefully post-survival after that 2021/22 season, Newcastle brought in 31 year old Kieran Trippier, 29 year old Dan Burn, 30 year old Chris Wood and 26 year old Matt Targett. Premier League experienced players needed to come in and instantly play and help avoid disaster. They did more than that, the new signings helping United to have the third best form of all Premier League teams in the second half 19 PL games of that season.

However, that was a needs must, as relegation immediately after taking over, would have set us back years.

Since that point, no new outfield players over the age of 25 have been signed, not one. Indeed, the likes of Gordon, Isak, Livramento, Minteh, Botman and Hall, all signed by Newcastle when they were 22 or younger.

As we all know, the tough decision had to be taken to sell young squad players Anderson and Minteh to satisfy PSR in June.

However, that doesn’t change the direction of travel for the Newcastle United team that Eddie Howe is putting together, for the years to come.

I think every chance we could see this Newcastle United team lining up in the very near future, maybe as early as January 2025, more likely August 2025 (the current ages of the players showing):

32 Nick Pope

21 Tino Livramento

24 Marc Guehi (or a similar young signing)

24 Sven Botman

20 Lewis Hall

24 Sandro Tonali

26 Bruno Guimaraes

28 Joelinton

A twenty something new right winger

23 Anthony Gordon

25 Alexander Isak

With Eddie Howe having the courage to spend the club’s big money on young players, it builds massively towards the future, as well as adding to the quality in the shorter term.

So long as you buy the right young players, who turn out to be very good players, even if some of them end up leaving for whatever reason, you then have the cash and PSR flex to reinvest in even more young talent.

Whereas if you go the other way and sign older players, you are constantly having the problem of replacing them far quicker AND they are rapidly devaluing with their best years in the past.

Competing for the Newcastle United team once again is 18 year old Lewis Miley, back to full fitness. Hopefully some of the many even younger signings that NUFC have made, will shortly join him, the likes of the exciting Trevan Sanusi and others.

I think that Newcastle United fans, some of us anyway, conveniently forget the PSR that limit what can be spent and how that restricts our transfer market power.

That comes into such sharp focus today when up against Chelsea, who the ‘rules’ allow to do pretty much whatever they want. Spending over £1.5billion from summer 2022 onwards. On top of what was already a very expensively assembled squad.

I think Eddie Howe is doing a brilliant job and he has had it so tough, not only in terms of dealing with the transfer market inequality when competing with the usual suspects, but then also the added huge injury and suspension issues that have plagued the last year or so.

The underlying picture is very bright in my opinion and Eddie Howe will build something special at Newcastle United, if given the time and backing – both from the club and us as fans.