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Newcastle United’s Transfer Policy Made Simple

12 years ago
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Newcastle United will be buying and selling players this summer but making sense of the endless minute by minute speculation isn’t always clear to the naked eye.

My reasoning is that it is usually a lot easier to spot which players we won’t be buying than the ones we end up getting.

On the basis that over the summer we’ll be linked with at least 100 players and probably bring in 4 or 5 at the most, means you are already on odds of at least 20-1 on any speculated player actually ending up at St.James’ Park.

Add in the factor that often the deals that do happen are signed and sealed before anybody gets a sniff, then the chances of Newcastle signing any player who we have been linked with regularly are getting even more outlandish.

Newcastle  United have also made it clear that they look for players having a resale value, so any speculation about anybody in their late twenties or older…don’t think so.

If you then stop and think, ‘hang on, didn’t I read somewhere that Mr.Ashley has put in place a pretty rigid wage structure’ then you can out a big cross through even more speculation.

If you’ve heard of the player then that’s normally not a good sign, it would mean he’s either playing in England and so will be on stupid wages, or he’s a ‘name’ international player who everybody will already be after.

In recent days Newcastle have been linked with Manchester City’s Adam Johnson and Barcelona’s Dutch winger/midfielder Ibrahim Afellay.

Is a player going to take a drop in wages? Unlikely, so any British player who goes to somewhere like City or Chelsea is very unlikely to end up at St.James’ Park. The days of a Parker or Duff getting their Chelsea wages matches at Newcastle are long gone, for those names read the likes of Milner and Johnson at City.

Barcelona have some brilliant players but a crazy wage bill, I’d very much assume that Dutch star (36 Caps) Afella who only signed for Barca 18 months ago, will be on higher wages than Papiss Cisse.

In the past Newcastle would pay the wages premium (in most cases the wrong strategy) to get players who wouldn’t otherwise come to the north east but that is now history, back in the day that would also lead to the established top players getting a comparable rise.

So that’s everybody clear on who we WON’T be signing, next step is who will be coming in….answers on a postcard.

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