With Emre on the verge of leaving Newcastle, and Damien Duff probably on his way to Sunderland, Newcastle fans may be getting a little agitated at what’s going on at the club.
Mike Ashley with fans – he knows what he’s doing
But we think the board is doing a good job of clearing the decks at the club of fringe players, and as long as Kevin Keegan is kept in the loop, we see nothing wrong with what the club is doing right now.
There’s no doubt Duff and Emre are good players, but with all their injuries over the last couple of years, it’s hard to make a case that they’ve been worth the wages Newcastle pay them, which is a lot.
We think the Newcastle board are simply moving out fringe players, particularly those on high wages, so we are ready for the incoming new players.
In the summer we expect Alan Smith to be added to the list of players leaving, because he is number 4 striker at the club right now, if you put him ahead of young Andy Carroll (and we wouldn’t), and it’s certain that Kevin will bring in another top class striker this summer. Maybe Peter Crouch or Bafe Gomis.
So as long as we can get our £6M back for Alan, which we paid to Man United last summer, he’ll also be on his way.
So players we expect to leave or have already left the club are:
Carr, Ramage, Diatta, Troisi, Emre, Duff, Ameobi and Smith.
That’s 8 players from the first team squad.
Players we don’t want to lose include Charles N’Zogbia and James Milner, simply because they are good, young and improving, and their current contracts were negotiated by the current regime last September, so we assume they are reasonable and within the new guidelines.
We’d also want to keep Michael Owen and Steven Taylor, but the club seem to be moving out some high wage earners so they can pay Owen and Taylor what they want – or at least once they know who is left, what they can adequately pay them, within the new wage limits.
That means 8 players will move out, and we have at least five new youngsters who will be in the first team squad next season in Forster, Edgar, Tozer, LuaLua and Kadar, and if we can get 5 new players in during the sumer then it will be 8 gone and 10 in. So if we rely on the youngsters filling out the first team squad and we bring 5 new top players in we should be just fine.
And the money we get from Emre, Duff and Smith (maybe £17M) will fund new transfers of players coming in.
We’ll still have a small squad, but hopefully the quality will be much improved from last season, and the new players we get will have decent injury free records at their previous clubs.
Looking at it that way , there’s definite method in the madness – well that’s probably not the best way of putting it – but there’s a definite plan behind what is happening.
Stay tuned, the Newcastle club is being well run these days, with some good thought given to the overall finances of the club – which of course will come as a shock to a lot of us, who were used to Shepherd’s reckless business model, that achieved very little success at the club.
We welcome a change, and we think it will be for the better.  😀
We’ll be OK – you just watch.
Comments welcome.
284 comments so far
CRAIGG
Jun 2, 2008 at 12:50 PM
Comment #281That is absolute rubbish
Richards is better than any of them no arguments, but none of those are better than Taylor.
On his day Taylor is much better than any of those.
Tom_Toon
Jun 2, 2008 at 12:52 PM
Comment #282Taylor is quite poor. When a new CB comes in he will be dropped not Faye.
JP from The Rock of Gibraltar
Jun 2, 2008 at 1:36 PM
Comment #283Silence from the club, rumours of unrest between Keegan and Wise, not a transfer in sight and we keep making our very small squad even smaller!!..of course I am panicking!!! Oh and the point that someone mentioned that Owen, Martins, and Taylor’s contracts are still not cleared up weeks after the season ended! WTF IS GOING ON!!!!?????? We need to make a few signings NOW or we will fall in the same trap as we have done in the past; Sell before Buying and we end up making panic buys at the end of the transfer window only to end up worse than when we started summer! BUY NOW GOD DAMN IT!!
MarK
Jun 2, 2008 at 2:32 PM
Comment #284Taylors pretty decent imo..definitely not on richards level but certainly not as bad as kaboul, dawson et al