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Tony Cascarino explains why Newcastle United won’t be able to sign these players

2 years ago
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Tony Cascarino says he is ‘excited’ by the Newcastle United takeover.

The one-time Mackem slayer (ask your dad / grandad – they might well have been at Roker Park to see it!) thinks it will be great to have another club now, who will be capable of challenging in the years to come.

Tony Cascarino believes that will take time and that Newcastle need to have a decent structure in place for recruiting players, rather than just going down the route of  ‘chuck it at everybody’ once they get to transfer windows.

The former Millwall and Marseille player hopes the new Saudi led owners ‘have the right intentions’ to build a ‘fantastic football club in the north east’, that can compete at the top.

However, he claims ‘It is very hard to attract players to the north east’ and that ‘managers have said to me’ that this is the case.

This is an old chestnut we have heard before, surprisingly enough the claims tend to come from people who hail from London and surrounding areas…

Once again the truth is something different. We all know how great the quality of life is in Newcastle Upon Tyne and the region in general, especially if you have plenty of money!

Speaking of money, that along with potential success on the pitch are by far the two massive attractions for players. Playing regularly in front of a big passionate crowd is probably third on the list.

I love Liverpool as a place to visit but nobody can tell me that the likes of them (and Everton in recent times) attract players because they would love to live there. The same with the Manchester clubs, players want to come to Man City now because they can win things and make loads of money, not because of the location.

If you are honest, pretty much every city / club in the country has places in close proximity that are lovely places to live, if you have the money.

When Tony Cascarino says he has spoken to managers that experienced this problem, does he mean Sir Bobby Robson and Kevin Keegan, who recruited the likes of Ferdinand, Woodgate, Shearer, Asprilla, Ginola, Robert and so on?

Or is he referring to managers who have been at Newcastle, or particularly Sunderland and Middlesbrough, when they are / were struggling?

With all due respect (none!), even Middlesbrough had no problem bringing in the likes of Juninho, Emerson and Ravanelli when they were competing on the pitch and paying the wages.

You look at the way a club like Leicester has been ran in recent years and especially their recruitment, no reason why Newcastle can’t copy that but potentially on an even bigger and better scale, hopefully.

The new owners are saying all the right things about how they intend to build NUFC over a period of time into a bigger better club that can compete. To do that they are looking at updating everything and making Newcastle United as attractive as possible, if players for example would prefer to sign for Leicester above Newcastle in recent years, it wasn’t about location. One club has been relegated and been fighting relegation year after year since then and refused to spend a single penny he didn’t have to on the infrastructure (despite promising an ‘essential’ state of the art new training complex in 2013 that would be built ASAP, as well as having to use the swimming pool of a local school for recovering players due to the only club hydrotherapy facility available having been kids paddling pools!), whilst you have the other club who have won the Premier League and FA Cup, played regularly in Europe and have a new stunning £95m training complex.

As somebody once said…build it and they will come (if you are paying the wages and showing the right ambition).

Tony Cascarino speaking on Talksport about the Newcastle United takeover:

“I’m excited to have another team at the table who is going to challenge, that is going to invest hugely.

“Doing that wisely is another massive challenge for them, because it’s not just we’ve got loads of money and just chuck it at everybody, you just can’t do that. There has to be a structure and you look at other clubs who have done this, when getting new [rich] owners.

“I’m excited on the football front and hopefully these people have the right intentions to build…and have a fantastic club in the north east.

“Which they sort of have got anyway with Sunderland, Newcastle, Middlesbrough – it is just that they have fallen a long way behind.

“You know what one of their biggest problems is now and this is no bias…it has been said before.

“It is very hard to attract players to the north east.

“Whether people from the north east don’t like it, you know, that you’re [I’m!] saying that…it has always been an obstacle.

“Managers have said to me, getting players to the north east has been tricky.”

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