The term 'medium club' does not do the monster that is Newcastle United justice, but Nasser Al-Khelaifi could just so easily have been referring to the Magpies at an FPF Football Talks event in Lisbon earlier this week. The Paris Saint-Germain president said that 'some of the big clubs want to stop the medium clubs becoming bigger' because they are 'scared of the competition'.
The Premier League's elite may have ultimately withdrawn their support for the shameless Super League proposal last year, but the reality is that certain clubs still do not want to see the top six one day become the 'big seven with Newcastle ' as Chelsea owner Todd Boehly previously predicted. Eddie Howe was the first to admit that 'the narrative regarding us has changed' and that was never more apparent than earlier this summer.
Howe was among those senior members of staff at Newcastle who felt that Premier League clubs were putting up the price of targets when the Magpies came calling. Brendan Rodgers, for one, was only half-joking when the Leicester City boss quipped that £40m 'might just cover three-quarters' of James Maddison's left leg while Angus Kinnear, the CEO of Leeds, said that one offer the club received for Jack Harrison would only be enough for his right leg.
