One agent has jokingly spoken of the “Newcastle January premium”. Others see the club as the bellwether for transfer business, reasoning that black and white investment will energise a window which usually sees precious little movement.
But inside St James’ Park, no-one anticipates the sort of recruitment fireworks that were speculated about when the Saudi takeover was confirmed in the first flushes of autumn.
“We’re in a relegation fight. This is not the window to sign £100million prima donnas,” a club source tells i matter-of-factly.
Instead Newcastle are concentrating on players who can “plug in and play” in a relegation fight – the likes of Burnley’s James Tarkowski, who could be asked to decide on a life-changing contract offer from Newcastle, or Nathan Ake, an Eddie Howe fancy who the club could try and prise from Manchester City on loan.
European targets are in their sights, but the real prize is battle-ready Premier League performers who can extricate them from the deep relegation trouble they find themselves in.
“There is a lot of work going on to be ready for it and there has to be because January is always a difficult window,” a source says.
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“The sort of players that we can get in – we’re not talking about necessarily spending vast sums of money, we’re talking about getting the right players for the situation we’re in.” Character checks and not big cheques are the talk of recruitment meetings. Newcastle are preparing for the fight to go to the wire and the thinking is they cannot carry anyone.
The extra funds provided by the takeover will help. But Newcastle’s new owners – and especially Amanda Staveley, Jamie Reuben and Mehrdad Ghodoussi, leading from the front for the consortium – know that this is a major test of their mettle after what has been described as a “frantic” start at the club.
They have their doubters in the game and know they face some hostility from rival clubs, although there have been no indications that a rumoured “No Newcastle” approach from Premier League rivals to selling their players will materialise.
Those inside St James’ Park feel the direction of travel is the right one, acknowledging the long hours everyone is pulling to turn around a club that had stagnated for years. There have been mistakes and missteps along the way, not least the approach for Unai Emery, which compounded leaving Steve Bruce in post for too long, and January will test whether the lines of power to the Saudi PIF, who sign off the big decisions, have been smoothed out effectively.
The club were widely expected to have a director of football in place but “existing staff” are heavily involved, including Steve Nickson, the man who drove the move for record signing Joelinton. The presence of Frank McParland as a transfer advisor appears to have fallen away.
It is a big job for Newcastle’s head of recruitment. Lately Nickson’s picks have been attempts to extract bargains from lesser known markets, trying to take advantage of new Brexit rules. Santiago Munoz arrived from Mexico to follow Rodrigo Vilca, a Peruvian under-23 international. The latter has been loaned out to Doncaster and sources in his home country believe he could return in January, with Alianza Lima interested in bringing him back.
In January, Nickson, well-respected in the game with good contacts in Europe, can recommend players in the higher bracket. Both he and Howe will have significant input, which perhaps neither anticipated fully when Newcastle started speaking to high-profile figures to fill football executive roles.
Links to Michael Emenalo, the man who masterminded the approach that revolutionised Chelsea’s recruitment, appeared to fizzle out a fortnight ago but one source close to the former Monaco technical director feels it remains “one to watch”. An executive head hunting agency has now taken over the search as Newcastle concentrate on January recruitment.
Privately, the size of the task facing the club as they look to revolutionise operations has been described as “huge”. Finding a new CEO is a priority in the first quarter of 2022, and a planned training ground upgrade has been promised.
The club will be free to sign off on major sponsorship deals after the Premier League agreed new rules, and tearing down Sports Direct hoardings was a further sign that the club is under new management.
In Howe they have a manager who, friends say, has become “obsessed” by the job in hand. With Liverpool and Manchester City this week, and Ralf Rangnick’s Manchester United after Christmas, the objective is simply to “stay in touch” with relegation rivals over the festive period.
The vision of the new owners is to be competitive at European level in time. But those dreams are checked by the reality that they will need to work quickly and effectively in January. For now, the fireworks can wait.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3m6guYu
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