Selling the Project | OneFootball

I sat and scratched my head and wondered why Benjamin Sesko would choose to move to Manchester United rather than Newcastle United.

A club (Man U) clearly in decline, with no European football and a recent track record of ruining players and managers in equal measure.

Why would he not want to join a team reborn in the image of Eddie Howe? A manager who is brilliant at getting the absolute best out of players.

Sesko could be the next Isak, Bruno or Tonali. He could help take us to the next level. Why would that not be the project he would choose?

The same goes for Pedro or Ekitike or Delap and all the other players we were linked with over the summer. Why is it that whenever we have any competition from the ‘big six’, we lose out?

The glaringly obvious answer is money, or more specifically, PSR. The clubs in that top six can all offer more money to players, even those who are not yet at the level of the very top earners. They can afford to offer long contracts and take a punt on those younger players who have not yet reached the elite level, but who show potential. The financial ability to do this is a privilege only few have, and the establishment have decreed that there must be no new additions to this very short list of superclubs.

Part of me thinks that we all want to console ourselves with the PSR argument because the alternative is that players just like the other clubs more than us, and that is unpalatable. Money is undoubtably a factor but there is more to this if we can be honest with ourselves.

I will caveat the following by saying, I know nothing about the inner workings of a footballer’s mind, just as I know no earthly reason why Americans would vote TWICE to elect Donald Trump as President. Both footballers and voters are clearly influenced by some clever and manipulative people.

There is an undeniable flaw in our club right now which may be another weighty factor in preventing us from recruiting the players we want. Separate the club from the team and we aren’t such an attractive prospect. I’m not talking about the morals of our owners here, but more about how the club is run, what the goals are.

We rose like a Phoenix from the ashes when our Cockney jailer was finally separated from Newcastle United. The feeling of hope and togetherness was like nothing we have ever seen before in football.

Yes, you could liken it to the Chelsea and Man City takeovers, but this was a little different, because the people who were leading this rise were personable (and it seemed) approachable. Ambitious people with charisma and class. I’m talking about Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi here. Their ability to have fans, players and journalists line up behind them, was Pied Piper-esque. Their demise and now the lack of a DOF and CEO has got to be a concern for any player linked with our club?

Others have said it but now I’m starting to see that there is an undeniable truth to that view.

The clear lack of credible leadership in the club will have players and their advisors asking themselves what kind of club they would be joining?

Would it be a club like Everton or Leicester, who had wealthy owners but no clue how to mix it with the big boys, only for those wannabe owners to spend big and make a mess of things and disappear?

Yes, Newcastle has the richest owners in the world, but do they have enthusiasm and patience for the long game. They have had to contend with disappointment that this project is not going to be successful overnight due to the financial rules. The Newcastle project must be managed properly and requires long-term planning and commitment from PIF. Has this changed their desire to be here?

The evidence suggests this might be the case with no stadium and training ground plans, no new CEO and DOF? What is the vision now, and if it is to be number one, then how do Newcastle United get there when the road is deliberately blocked?

The truth is that the likes of Man City, Chelsea, Man Utd etc will change managers and players when needed but they will always be there or thereabouts in the league and players who are successful for those clubs will always be paid well and competing at the top. Those clubs have mass, they have layers of management and are run with huge budgets. Maybe Man Utd isn’t the greatest example of this, but they will always generate the revenue and always have potential.

Our Saudi owners started to create and develop the system to replicate and even surpass those established clubs but, as someone recently put it, when Sesko sat down with a ‘property developer’ at Newcastle United, who has nothing to back up his grand vision for the club, then we had already lost the race.

It might be that we have a fabulous manager who has transformed the club and that he will continue to bring success to Newcastle United and make us number one, but it could also be that he’ll end up doing what he does with more resources at another top club.

Newcastle United is bigger than one man but that’s only if the club is run with vision and long-term sustainability at its core. Having that in place is going to land us the kind of players that have escaped us this summer.