After finally shaking hands with Mike Ashley and wrestling control of Newcastle United earlier this month, Amanda Staveley wasted little time in spelling out the club’s plans in the transfer market.
“We are in the market to compete for world-class players,” Staveley told The Sun.
“We have great ambitions — I hope it’s going to be a game changer for Newcastle United.”
Staveley, and Newcastle’s Saudi Arabian overlords, are savvy enough to realise, however, that Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe are not going to give Real Madrid the cold shoulder in order to share a dressing room with Jonjoe Shelvey and Ciaran Clark.
The rejuvenation of Newcastle United will be a gradual one – a la Manchester City in the early Sheikh Mansour days – rather than an overnight, blink-of-an-eye transformation; like a butterfly emerging slowly from its cocoon.
The nature of Sunday’s 3-2 defeat at home to Tottenham Hotspur (a scoreline that flattered the hosts rather than their dominant visitors) will have left Staveley and co in no doubt about the size of the task facing them at a club who are not only winless but now, following Steve Bruce’s inevitable yet still rather sudden departure, managerless too.
Who will Newcastle target in January?
With the January transfer window now only two months away, an immediate opportunity to make a statement of intent, not to mention replenish and revitalise an underperforming squad, will present itself early in the PIF era.
It is not one they are likely to miss.
And the early signs suggest that PIF will prioritise proven Premier League players rather than expensive imports.
Jesse Lingard, Harry Winks, James Tarkowski, Ross Barkley and even Everton’s £80 million-rated centre-forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin have been linked during the last week or so, the latter via The Telegraph on Wednesday morning.
While Winks and Barkley are not the sort of names who will have supporters tattooing ‘Premier League champions 2023’ on their limbs, it should be a relief to know that Newcastle’s new owners understand the importance of signing readymade players capable of moving north and immediately settling into life at St James’ Park in the heart of a relegation battle.
Mohammed Bin Salman did not purchase Newcastle to see them take on Reading, Barnsley and Bristol City on a cold February night.
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