As a Newcastle fan you approach the transfer window (particularly the January transfer window) with emotional caution. Yes, we need reinforcements. We always need reinforcements but our season so far has exposed our squad depth, or lack thereof, and we’ve suffered for it.
Let me to refer you to Newcastle’s bench away against Paris St-Germain where we had seven subs to PSG’s eight, and three of them children called up to train from the U-21s only a couple of weeks prior, and two of them were goalkeepers. None made it onto the pitch.
As for the transfer window, where we hope for back up, for spending, for fresh legs, instead we find a strange limbo for all clubs: players going for inflated prices and most clubs reluctant to move things around in the middle of their campaigns.
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I will go one step further and say it’s even stranger for Newcastle United. Take my hand and walk with me back to January 2021 when our marquee signing, complete with a video interview and X.com unveiling (then Twitter), was… Graeme Jones arriving as assistant head coach.
No disrespect to Jones, who is still part of the coaching staff who helped us qualify for the Champions League, and even took charge of the team as caretaker between Steve Bruce's sacking and Eddie Howe's arrival, but his January 2021 'unveiling' was quite something. Quite something disappointing.
Back to the year 2024 where Financial Fair Play exists in conversation with all of the above. Are we getting ideas above our station to think that we might find players that a) we can afford b) want to come to a club that hasn’t performed as well as last season and c) will fit in immediately and seamlessly with a squad known for its togetherness, camaraderie and intensity?
When I type this it does seem like a big ask. But we’re Newcastle fans so still we ask it, time and again, because we are so desperate for our club to succeed.
That brings me on to Darren Eales, CEO of Newcastle United. Eleven days into the window, standing on the steps of St James Park* explaining that Newcastle’s accounts show a £73m loss, and that we can’t do anything until we sell our beloved players, and how everyone needs to relax and get comfortable with no signings and maybe some outgoings**.
On X dot com, where rumours abound, and everyone melts down, we are losing Trippier, talisman of the new era of Newcastle United, Almiron is off, possibly Wilson too. Please, not Joelinton as well! Maybe not, at time of writing, but the rumour mill never stops whirring, so perhaps yes by the time you read this.
We need to sell to buy! But we don’t want to sell anyone! But we definitely need to buy! Argh!
All this is to say: when I was pulling on my dad’s hand-me-down Newcastle United jumper over two decades ago and going to my first match, I did not expect that [undisclosed] years later I would need to have a rudimentary understanding profit and sustainability rules and restrictions, because they pertain to my club’s ability to compete.
It feels frustrating to have to consider these things when that’s not really what being a football fan should be all about. Football is supposed to be romantic and nostalgic.
I struggle to see how I will look back with rose tinted glasses on 2021, a year in which I, and much of the NUFC fanbase, became au fait with the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East.
I just want to watch class lads score goals and celebrate with my friends, and my Dad. That doesn’t feel like so much of a big ask, but with the current backdrop perhaps it is.
*he did not do this
**this is really more my read on the situation than anything he actually said
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