Everything is brilliant at Newcastle actually! My captors are treating me well…
The Athletic have conducted a survey in which they asked fans of all 20 Premier League clubs whether they were optimistic ahead of the season. Here are the full results, which are pretty bloody stark about one club in particular:
The reasons are pretty damned obvious: They have had a very poor pre-season, have not bought a single player they could not have signed without Champions League football, they have missed out on a series of targets, and their star player, top scorer and actual only senior striker is not training with the club because he desperately wants to join Liverpool.
Apart from all that, everything’s absolutely bloody brilliant.
Or it is if you are Luke Edwards of the Daily Telegraph, who – if Newcastle United’s owners had a Facebook page – would be a ‘top fan’. He sure does love those Saudis.
It has been a testing, challenging summer for Newcastle United, but as the first game of the Premier League season towards us, they appear to have quietly rescued their transfer window.
Apparently they have done this so ‘quietly’ that 81% of fans (and 100% of us) have not noticed.
With the narrative dominated by negatives in June and July, and with a huge Alexander Isak-shaped cloud still hanging over St James’ Park, Newcastle have been perceived as a club in crisis for much of the summer.
Yet if you take a closer look at the transfer business they have done, which includes the imminent arrival of midfielder Jacob Ramsey from Aston Villa for around £40m, they have upgraded their squad in almost every position desired.
The ‘almost’ is screaming so loud that a small child would need ear defenders. Newcastle United began the summer needing one striker after allowing Callum Wilson to leave; they now face the prospect of starting the Premier League season with winger Anthony Gordon up front.
But let’s allow Edwards to explain…
Anthony Elanga is a big improvement on Jacob Murphy on the right flank and the winger who enjoyed his best ever season on Tyneside last term remains as competition and cover.
Aaron Ramsdale is a better goalkeeper than Martin Dubravka, who has left for Burnley. Ramsey is a better player than Sean Longstaff, who was sold to Leeds United.
As for Malick Thiaw, he has been a long-standing target of Howe and his arrival from AC Milan finally ends the two-year wait for a new right-sided centre back to compete with stalwart Fabian Schar.
Elanga is indeed an upgrade on Murphy (though they paid an inflated fee that literally no other club in the world would have paid) but what Edwards then describes is upgrading a second-choice goalkeeper, upgrading – for £40m! – a midfielder who started eight Premier League games last season, and spending over £30m on a defender who was about to be sold to Como for £10m less.
This is slightly different from the ‘two big signings, players who immediately raise the standard of the first team’ claim that Edwards himself made at the end of May. At a stretch, we might put Elanga in that bracket, though Murphy scored more goals and claimed more Premier League assists last season.
All things considered, that means Newcastle have strengthened both their starting XI and their squad depth ahead of their return to the Champions League.
Only if we entirely ignore the fact that they do not have a single senior striker that wants to play for the club. And that really does seem rather important.
Can anyone really claim ‘all things considered’, that the starting XI likely to play on Saturday (According to the local newspaper, that will be Pope; Trippier, Schar, Burn, Livramento; Tonali, Guimaraes, Joelinton; Barnes, Gordon, Elanga) is better than the first-choice line-up from last season (Pope; Livramento, Schar, Burn, Hall; Tonali, Guimaraes, Joelinton; Gordon, Isak, Murphy)?
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