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What do Newcastle fans have to complain about when can spend £40m on a striker? Ultimate irony

4 years ago
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Newcastle fans never happy.

Here they go again moaning.

Delusional, always thinking they should be spending fortunes and winning trophies every season.

We have all heard these type of things, year after year.

The usual suspects.

Zero integrity pundits, Mike Ashley allies/associates, rival fans with an agenda and so on.

A new insult to throw our way though, has been…

‘What do Newcastle fans have to complain about when can spend £40m on a striker?’

Talk about the ultimate irony. I will explain.

The £40m jibe I have heard used in the wake of games such as the FA Cup victories over Oxford and Rochdale.

People saying Joelinton cost more than these entire clubs are worth etc etc.

After the West Brom match it was a similar story, I saw comparisons made between what the entire home side cost compared to the Brazilian.

Even when it comes to the Premier League I see the £40m (£43m according to Mike Ashley) Joelinton deal used against us, as in what do Newcastle fans have to moan about when their club can go out and spend £40m/£43m on just one player.

Maybe best to start at the point when Joelinton was signed in July 2019, only five days after Steve Bruce had got the job.

Rather than celebrating the fact that Newcastle had now spent £40m+ on a player, I would say the main reaction was one of bemusement from Newcastle fans.

After starving Rafa Benitez of funds, Mike Ashley was now giving the go ahead to spending £40m on one player. The previous summer (2018), Ashley had made Rafa produce a £20m profit on transfers in and out.

Even the January 2019 purchase of Miguel Almiron had only brought last season’s net transfer spending up to around zero.

In April 2019, Lee Charnley stated that there was £61m available to spend (plus money from sales, allegedly) on signings for the 2019/20 season. So also a massive puzzle as to why with so many other positions to strengthen as well, you would blow two thirds on just one player/

Then of course came the question of the identity of this £40m superstar. What had convinced Mike Ashley that he simply had to have this player no matter what it cost?

Like the rest of you I Googled his stats and to say his goalscoring record was underwhelming, is a massive understatement. Best ever league goals return for Joelinton? Eight in the Austrian league.

Our enemies make the mistake (on purpose in many cases…) of stating and wanting to believe that for Newcastle fans, the problem is always about how much money is, or isn’t, spent.

That is simply not true and the Joelinton fiasco is the absolute proof of that.

We have a top class manager starved of funds, Rafa Benitez giving Mike Ashley a long-term plan of how to progress the club, if given reasonable financial backing on a year by year basis.

Instead, Mike Ashley forces Rafa out, so that he can run the club exactly how he wants to, which includes deciding which players are bought.

I would far rather we had kept Benitez and spent less money, just so long as Rafa could choose them.

Than this Mike Ashley total shambles of the owner picking players and installing a patsy to coach and pick the team.

Around £65m was spent this season, which isn’t a low figure.

However, it is a disaster when it is spent on…

A £40m goalscorer who doesn’t score goals and now is universally acknowledged as not even a centre-forward.

Spending so much on Joelinton then meant…

Newcastle made the joke signing of permacrock Andy Carroll to try and fill the other goalcoring role.

Only £5m available to bring in the essential better quality right wing-back – Emil Krafth absolutely hopeless.

Then a load of loan signings to make up the numbers.

Only Allan Saint-Maximin looking like a decent permanent signing these past two windows.

As I say, how ironic that Mike Ashley making this £40m+ signing is then used to show how deluded and ungrateful Newcastle fans are!

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