da pixbet： Whatever happens between now and the end of the transfer window, Newcastle United should still have a squad capable of staying in the Premier League.
da leao： Sometimes you don’t need the best squad, just good organisation and a good spirit.
There are two things wrong with this from a Newcastle perspective, though. One is that a club of the size of the St James’ Park outfit should surely be aiming higher than ‘just survival’, even if they are a newly promoted team and even if a top half finish should be considered a very good season. That’s because there’s reasonable ambition and there’s setting the bar either too high or too low.
The second reason is that whilst Newcastle probably still have a squad that looks as though it should be a very good Championship indeed, they’ve surely spent enough money this summer for it to look like a decent Premier League side instead.
Take West Brom as an example. When Newcastle were promoted as champions of the second tier in 2010, the Baggies were the second team to make the step up, finishing runners-up and achieving automatic promotion. Since then, they’ve had a number of stable years in the top flight, finishing as high as 8th in 2013, when Romelu Lukaku scored a very creditable 17 Premier League goals. But that’s as good as it’s been until recently.
Newcastle, by contrast, have felt a little more boom and bust, suffering relegation and arriving back in the top flight again this season. The biggest difference, though, is how the squad look right now.
That might be a little unfair on Newcastle as they are a newly-promoted side. But they are undoubtedly a bigger club than West Brom, just given the size of the areas they represent and their respective fanbases. That means Newcastle should be able to compete.
And yet, before the transfer deadline, Tony Pulis’s side could line up with players like Grzegorz Krychowiak Oliver Burke and even, as has been reported, Eliaquim Mangala by the end of the transfer window. That would be the sign of an upwardly mobile club, even if none of those players mentioned are proven Premier League quality. It would be wrong to go too far in hyping the Baggies up too much, though signings like Gareth Barry do seem to show a side that can handle the league. But it does speak to an ambition that Newcastle don’t seem to be showing.
Probably the biggest sign that shows that the Magpies aren’t hitting their potential, though, is the fact that they haven’t broken a very long-standing transfer record.
Sure, big transfer fees don’t mean success. The mere mention of Eliaquim Mangala above should make that abundantly clear. But when the Premier League has consistently made its clubs richer year by year in the 12 years since Michael Owen arrived on Tyneside for a club record fee worth nearly £17m, it seems strange that Newcastle haven’t beaten that.
Chelsea were the only other club not to break their transfer record over the last few seasons, after their 2011 move for Fernando Torres, but this summer’s £58m swoop for Alvaro Morata means that they too have broken their transfer record, leaving only Newcastle who haven’t done so since the last round of TV rights deals were mooted to be game-changing.
Since then, the likes of Crystal Palace have spent £30m on a striker with a household name in Christian Benteke, whilst Newcastle are struggling with Dwight Gayle and Joselu up front. That Benteke fee is almost double the Magpies’ all-time record, despite Newcastle being surely the bigger club, having competed in the Champions League this century.
It shouldn’t be too much of a problem for survival if the squad remains organised, but in an era where money should be no object for Premier League football clubs, it does seem less than ambitious. Spending in the modern game might be outrageous, but the problem is, once everyone else starts to do it, you have to follow suit or get left behind. And whilst Newcastle don’t need to break their transfer record just to feel good about themselves, you get the feeling that they won’t get very far until they do.