Football Is All

It feels like Newcastle were taken over a lifetime ago, and since then we’ve had the highs of a cup final, champions league qualification, and finally winning a derby day. But we’ve also had the lows of… finishing 7th?

The Transfer Window

First off I want to start by saying that this transfer window has been lacklustre to say the least, I’m sure if you had of told me at the start of the summer the only major business we would do is keeping a player who had already been with us for the previous season in Lewis Hall, Lloyd Kelly on a free, and signing a Sheff Utd striker whilst selling two of our best young stars, I would not have been too impressed.

However, we did manage to keep the big three in Bruno, Isak, and Gordon. Make no mistake that is no mean feat considering the lack of European football this year and PSR breathing down our necks at seemingly every turn. But the drawn out pursuit of Marc Guehi has a lot of fans (myself included) very frustrated at the way we have went about our business this window despite keeping them. Now, I don’t doubt Dan Ashworth unceremoniously demanding a job switch to Man United helped at all in planning for the summer window but that was months before the summer. We should’ve had a clear plan in place in by the time June/July rolled around of what we had to spend and in what positions/who we needed to spend it on.

I think I speak for a large majority of Newcastle fans when I say No.1 on my transfer wishlist this summer was a new right-wing. I love Jacob Murphy as much as the next person but he’s not good enough to be a starter for a mid table premier league team never mind a consistent champions league contender. And unless Almiron can permanently roll back the clock to October-November 2022 version of himself then the same applies for him. We needed above all else this window a high-quality right wing option and waiting until the last few hours of the transfer window to put in a lazy £35m offer for Nottm Forest’s Anthony Elanga as our only attempt to achieve this is a disgrace in my opinion. Gordon or Barnes can play off the right however this is neither of their best positions in my opinion and doesn’t work as a long term solution

Looking Forward

However, as I write this, we have just beaten Spurs at home 2-1, are still in the carabao cup, and are unbeaten in the first 3 games of the premier league this season. I do think we can still have a good year despite this very mediocre transfer window and it does mean we’ll have more funds to spend come January and next summer to the sum of at least the reported £70m we bid for Guehi. If Gordon or Barnes can truly adapt to playing RW and we can stay relatively injury free I do believe we can still get champions league and who knows, maybe we’ll even lift a trophy come the end of the season if we get some better draws like Wimbledon away.

Thanks for reading, Howay the lads.

Luke