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Newcastle United squad at Asian Trophy shows only £37m spent on players in last 6 transfer windows

5 years ago
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The Newcastle United squad flew off to China on Saturday.

In only 48 hours time, the Magpies will play in the Premier League Asia Trophy’s opening match against Wolves at the Nanjing Olympic Stadium on Wednesday 17 July (kick-off 11am BST), this is then followed by Manchester City against West Ham United (kick-off 1.30pm BST) at the same venue.

Then on Saturday (20 July) at the Hongkou Stadium in Shanghai on Saturday, a third/fourth place play-off (kick-off 10am BST) will be followed by the final (kick-off 12.30pm BST), to see who will be crowned Premier League Asia Trophy champions 2019.

Yesterday it became apparent that there had been one change to the previously advertised squad of 27 players.

Club photos showing 19 year old Elias Sorensen had made the trip in the place of Joselu, with the 29 year old’s long reported move to Alaves seemingly set to happen at last.

This is that 27 man Newcastle United squad:

Martin Dúbravka, Ciaran Clark, Paul Dummett, Ki Sung-yueng, Fabian Schär, Jamaal Lascelles, Jacob Murphy, Jonjo Shelvey, Dwight Gayle, Matt Ritchie, Yoshinori Muto, Isaac Hayden, Rolando Aarons, Federico Fernández, Javier Manquillo, Joselu, Jack Colback, Jamie Sterry, Karl Darlow, Freddie Woodman, Nathan Harker, Achraf Lazaar, Sean Longstaff, Matthew Longstaff, Owen Bailey, Kelland Watts, Tom Allan

Rafa Benitez left Newcastle United for a number of reasons but underlying it all was a total lack of ambition – as well as stupidity, summed up by the failure to keep promises to allow proper investment in the squad in the Premier League and Rafa the freedom to make the decisions on transfers in and out.

Checking this squad out, I think he might have a ‘bit’ of a point…

Of the 27 players in China, 20 of them were already at the club when Rafa’s first season in charge at Newcastle kicked off in the Championship.

The seven players who have been added since promotion back to the Premier League in 2017 are:

£4m Dubravka

£10m Murphy

£3m Schar

£9.5m Muto

£6 Fernandez

£0 Ki

£4m Manquillo

I make that only £36.5m spent on this 27 man Newcastle United squad since promotion, that is five transfer windows including this current one (Now at day 61 with not a single signing and only 24 days until it closes.

Indeed, Mike Ashley blocked Rafa Benitez from making any signings in January 2017 as well, as the manager looked to make sure of promotion and to start building for the Premier League, so it is actually six transfer windows worth of business that has added this £36.5m worth of players to the squad out in China.

The only other players bought in those six windows and who couldn’t make this trip are £21m Almiron, £6m Atsu and £9m Lejeune.

Leaving Manchester City aside, the other two clubs at the Asia Trophy show up the crippling lack of investment in this Newcastle United squad.

Whilst Newcastle are showing a £30m (so far…) profit, Wolves and West Ham are making significant investment once again this Summer.

Amongst their signings, Wolves have paid £32m for Raul Jimenez to convert from a loan to permanent.

Whilst the Hammers have paid £25m for Pablo Fornals amongst their Summer signings and are set to now pay £35m+ for striker Sebastien Haller from Eintracht Frankfurt, a forward that Newcastle have been constantly linked with…

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