“You fear for them, you really do”. A well-worn cliché that pundits will use to express their worries for at least one club at the beginning of every Premier League season, often before a ball has even been kicked in earnest.
This year, it looks like my beloved Newcastle United are chief among the sides attracting fretful glances, based on a summer of high-profile outgoings and much lower-profile arrivals, creating a squad littered with uncertainty and inexperience.
What’s more, head coach and certified club legend Eddie Howe walked away with just three weeks to go before the Premier League’s return and, at the time of writing, his successor is yet to have been formally announced.
No more silly notions of challenging for titles – only excitement and potential
Given all of this chaos, it’s easy to see why pundits, fans and casual observers are looking at Newcastle like a giant bin fire that no one’s bothering to pour so much as a glass of water over. Yet, I’m much more excited about this upcoming season than seemingly everyone else.
Firstly, I’m delighted to see Newcastle doing what they should have been doing all along, identifying young, exciting players with potential and bringing them in with development and future profit in mind. It was a method that worked perfectly with Alexander Isak, Sandro Tonali and now Bruno Guimaraes and should never have been abandoned.
Instead, we’re now forced to live with the consequences of last summer’s drastic overspend, which has burdened us with players like Anthony Elanga and Yoane Wissa, who are unlikely to be moved on any time soon, or generate the club any profit at all. All we can do is hope they come good, but there’s little evidence to suggest that’s coming this season. Prove me wrong, lads. Please?
Despite that, we’re now looking at a refreshed squad full of youth and exuberance and, although it’s certainly a risk, a few more arrivals are needed between now and the start of the season. I’m really excited about watching these players grow and create moments to remember in black and white and eventually be disheartened when they leave in big money moves to clubs who are simply better placed to pay what they should be earning.
Sure, losing the likes of Isak, Guimaraes, Anthony Gordon and Tonali has been painful, but only because those players are success stories of a transfer policy that served us extremely well before it was carelessly dropped. I’d much rather be gutted to lose Bazoumana Toure and Aladji Bamba to bigger sides in years to come, than be praying to see the back of them because their moves haven’t worked out. This is how we should have been doing business all along, and I’m pleased to see it make a return.
Something I’m less keen to see back at Newcastle any time soon are the ridiculous suggestions of competing for titles, or challenging among the top clubs in the world by 2030. Granted, those ideas have been pushed into the public conscience by people from within the club, first by Amanda Stavely and then by CEO David Hopkinson, creating a completely false sense of identity that Newcastle fans were stuck with. Not many of us believed those statements were true and, in the long run, they’ve made the club look silly, rather than giving them the appearance of genuine, serious contenders.
By putting these new foundations in place, Newcastle once again have a realistic project to be excited about instead of one that feels like it’s trying to achieve more than it is ever capable of and is subsequently, obviously, doomed to fail. Last season was dispiriting for those very reasons, particularly during the summer, as the Mags tried to lure in huge, expensive and unrealistic targets like Hugo Ekitike and Benjamin Sesko, while also trying to balance PSR spreadsheets.
This year is not going to be defined by an inability to spend big on players who probably don’t want to come to Newcastle anyway. Instead, it’s going to be defined by effective recruitment and forward thinking, with players desperate to impress and make a name for themselves at St James’ Park, rather than those who would be instantly eyeing up the next big move.
The recruitment hasn’t only been exciting on the pitch either, with new boss Matthias Jaissle potentially the most intriguing arrival of the summer, if the club ever announces it formally. Howe’s project had grown stale and, as much as I love the man for everything he did at Newcastle, he looked depleted and bereft of energy, even after his summer break. It was obvious towards the end of last season that a change was needed and, while it’s come later than I would have liked, I’m pleased he was eventually able to admit that his stepping down was in everyone’s best interests.
Now, instead of dreading another unimaginative and predictable 90 minutes of Howe-ball at the start of the season, in which we only get like-for-like substitutes after the 80th minute, I cannot wait to see how Jaissle sets us up and tinkers with the squad and implements his ideas and philosophies, which are said to be attacking-minded and aggressive according to those who know, and gets the team working together over time.
Obviously, there’s every chance he may not be able to do that, or it may take him a while, but I’m much more optimistic about his chances than I was of Howe ever rediscovering the energy and passion that drove us to our first trophy in decades, that had completely drained from both him and the squad over the last 12 months.
That’s not to say it’s been a perfect summer. I do sympathise with those concerned about Newcastle’s future, but I cannot help but also be fascinated and positive about how the club has reacted to a year in which the consequences of their mistakes and poor decisions have made life for them and their supporters extremely difficult.
There is work to be done still. A lot of it, in fact. But, free from expectation and unfettered by daft delusions of grandeur, I truly believe this could be the start of a great new period for Newcastle United, rather than simply the end of its most successful one in living memory.