“If you want to understand Newcastle you first need to understand its place in the world – that is, a very long way from anywhere. The next major city is Leeds, two hours drive to the south … London feels very far away.”
If Eddie Howe can only hope his prospective signings do not stumble across the Rough Guides introduction to England’s northern cities, Newcastle’s manager may also reflect that it was not supposed to be like this.
The days when the club’s recruitment strategy was often a victim of its geographical isolation were supposed to have ended four years ago when Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund obtained the keys to St James’ Park.
In October 2021 there was a sense of giddiness in the Tyneside air as Amanda Staveley, the then Newcastle director and minority owner who played a key role in convincing one of the world’s richest sovereign wealth funds to buy the club from Mike Ashley, settled back into a sofa at the city’s leafy Jesmond Dene House hotel and spoke of soaring ambition and trophies galore.
Since then a series of leading players including Alexander Isak, Sandro Tonali and Bruno Guimarães have signed for Newcastle, Howe’s team are in the Champions League for the second time in three years and are the holders of the Carabao Cup, their first domestic trophy for 70 years.
Rather less positively, Isak is doing his utmost to force through a move to Liverpool, a slew of big names have turned down Howe in favour of relocating to London or Manchester this summer and Newcastle are seeking their third sporting director and second chief executive in three years.
Oh and Staveley and her husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, are no longer around, after being ousted in a boardroom power struggle last summer. Staveley spoke subsequently of her “heartbreak” and “devastation” at that departure, insisting rumours of a planned exit were “absolute rubbish”.
Thirteen months on Newcastle’s chair, Yasir al-Rumayyan, and the rest of the Riyadh-based Saudi ownership are perhaps realising that maybe she was more important to their Geordie project than they realised. Arguably almost everything that has subsequently gone wrong seems rooted in that parting of the ways.
Newcastle’s Eddie Howe has seen a number of transfer targets sign for rival clubs. Photograph: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United/Getty Images
Crucially, Staveley and Ghodoussi were excellent communicators within a club where, at assorted levels, personal connections have since loosened and the Saudi ownership remain so remote that no representative of PIF has spoken to the UK football media.
In contrast Staveley was big on the human touch, taking time to stop and chat to players, staff and, occasionally, reporters while also sending first-teamers regular text messages as she established rare trust with the instinctively wary Howe. Maybe Staveley sometimes over-promised. Isak’s representatives certainly believe the striker was assured his £150,000-a-week wages would be boosted significantly last summer and the fallout is hurting Howe now.
Yet given that Newcastle only narrowly avoided a potential points deduction and heavy fine after scrambling to comply with Premier League spending rules within hours of a key deadline last June, the club’s decision to tell Isak he would have to be content with his current deal after all represented financial logic.
Howe’s problem was that a striker who proceeded to score 27 goals last season remained seriously annoyed. Indeed Isak, along with certain similarly sulky teammates, started the campaign badly and it took the manager’s considerable man-management skills to talk them round. It did not go unnoticed that, after the Carabao Cup triumph, Isak’s body language turned uninterested again.
Even so, the Swede had three years on his contract and there was a – misplaced – sense that a supposedly “laid-back” character would not “rock the boat”, let alone skip a pre-season tour of south east Asia, particularly as he was poised to be offered an improved contract this summer.
Instead Liverpool’s interest turned the head of a striker said to be disappointed that there is still no sign of a much-vaunted new training ground at a club where a long-awaited, and much-delayed, decision as to whether Newcastle will revamp St James’ Park or build a new stadium has again been postponed.
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At a time when, given the constraints of profitability and sustainability rules, the art of selling is just as important as buying players, moving Isak to Liverpool for £120m-plus this month makes sense, permitting Howe to restock a talented but slender squad.
The real puzzle is the lack of honest springtime conversations with Isak that might have allowed Newcastle to force an auction involving Liverpool, Arsenal et al before using their handsome profit to source an elite replacement.
Instead Liam Delap, João Pedro, Hugo Ekitiké and now, perhaps, Benjamin Sesko have slipped through the net, preferring to move to London or Manchester.
Alexander Isak is doing his utmost to force through a move to Liverpool. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA
Newcastle, though, is not exactly Siberia and might have proved an easier sell had the Saudis swiftly appointed a successor to Darren Eales, who announced his resignation as chief executive 11 months ago after a blood cancer diagnosis.
Eales finally seems about to be replaced by the Canadian former Real Madrid executive David Hopkinson, but Paul Mitchell’s abrupt departure “by mutual consent”, announced in late May, dictates that Newcastle have spent the transfer window without a sporting director.
Mitchell, who succeeded Dan Ashworth last July, left without signing a player after kicking off his tenure by declaring that the transfer strategy was “unfit for purpose” and the manager needed “to evolve”.
An uneasy truce with Howe eventually ensued but, less than 24 hours after Mitchell and the manager met Rumayyan for a post-season planning summit, his impending exit was announced.
Throw in the enduring silence from Saudi Arabia and it is easy to understand why a footballer’s agent might tell his client that, although Howe is clearly a brilliant coach, Newcastle look a bit dysfunctional right now. Geography may no longer be the main reason why top players steer clear of Tyneside.
