Uncomfortable truth for these fans – Eddie Howe’s Newcastle United doing better than should be expected | OneFootball

What position should Newcastle United be in the Premier League?

When Eddie Howe took over in November 2021, NUFC were 19th in the top tier.

By the end of that season in May 2022, Newcastle finished 11th in the Premier League.

As for 2022/23, Eddie Howe’s first full season, fourth was where United were positioned at the end of that campaign.

When the 2023/24 season concluded nine days ago, this is how the Premier League table looked when completed:

The question is then, where should we have reasonably expected Newcastle United to end up this past season?

Is there a way of measuring it?

Well, like many things in life, we surely need to talk money.

Following the summer 2023 transfer window, the CIES Football Observatory produced a report that ranked the cost of what each current squad of players had cost their club.

The report showing the the top 100 clubs in the world who had invested the most on transfer fees (including add-ons regardless of effective payment) to recruit players currently in their squad, all figures in Euros and they even also gave a breakdown of how much spent on each area of the squad.

Transfer fees committed to assemble the squad (€ Million) – Squads as on 11/09/2023. Including any add-ons and paying loans.

As you can see, it is broken down by how much has been spent on players in each position and then the total on the far right.

All of the ‘big six’ have current squads that have cost a lot more than Newcastle United’s (€661 = £565m), this is obviously before you then even factor in the fact that most of the big money signings made by Newcastle have missed loads of games this season. The likes of Botman, Isak, Joelinton, Tonali, Barnes etc.

As you can see, West Ham and Villa fill the two places directly below Newcastle United in this list of most expensive squads above, they have very had very few players ruled out by injury this season, so I would think all but guaranteed that when it comes to players available week in week out, the reality has been those two clubs having more expensive available matchday squads than Newcastle’s on a regular basis.

Just as important as the transfers fees Premier League clubs can afford to play, maybe even more important, is the level of wages at the various clubs. Something which is key to attracting top players.

This is a table compiled by The Times recently and shows the latest available figures on Premier League wage bills.

No surprise to see which six clubs are at the top.

The Newcastle United £187m wage bill for 2022/23 is absolutely dwarfed by Manchester City and their £423m, way over twice as much as NUFC ‘s, £236m higher.

Liverpool’s (£374m) is exactly double Newcastle’s, £187m higher.

Whilst Chelsea (£360m) and Man U (£331) are also pretty much double that of NUFC, £173m and £144m higher respectively.

With Aston Villa also higher than NUFC, Newcastle United only the eighth highest in terms of wages.

Of course everything is about money in the end AND it is the only way you can compete long-term.

It is vital as well of course that revenues increase as rapidly as possible at Newcastle United, as especially with PSR, you simply can’t compete on transfer fees and wages without massively increasing the cash coming in.

Against all odds, Eddie Howe produced that fourth place Champions League qualifying finish last season, despite having a squad that cost far less than so many of their rivals and NUFC with a wage bill swamped by these rivals.

That success on the pitch has been key to help significantly increase the revenues for this past season, when it comes to so many revenue streams, from matchday to commercial to merit (where you finish in the various competitions).

Even if this season, Newcastle United hadn’t experienced the worst ever injury list in the club’s history (plus Tonali’s ban on top of that), finishing around seventh or eighth would have been a fair expectation, based on the resources available to Eddie Howe. It is up to you to judge how much more slack you could potentially currently allow the NUFC boss, when having been faced with so many months with so many matches but so few available players.

If/when Newcastle United are up amongst the top four or five when it comes to cost of squad and wage bills, only then could anybody dare to suggest that finishing outside the top six is failure.

The 2022/23 season was a stunning achievement by Eddie Howe and his players.

This season?

I think everybody has to accept that top eight would have been success for Newcastle United for sure, when taking all factors into consideration, with even ‘only’ five or six unavailable NUFC players month after month, who knows what could have been the different reality? Rather than so many key players missing and regularly double figures missing in total.

That doesn’t mean that we should all accept whatever as our fate, simply because the top half dozen clubs are still so financially dominant and the missing list of players has been a crazy burden for Eddie Howe.

However, all Newcastle United fans have to accept the reality that based on spending money on transfer fees, player wages and indeed everything else, the information above tells us that given fair luck on injuries etc, Newcastle’s natural position as things stand is around eighth, behind the usual six and Villa, when it comes to the money spent. That is before you even come to all the other advantages all these clubs hold over NUFC, as they were doing everything they could for a decade and a half to build for the future via investment in their academy, investment in their infrastructure, world wide scouting operations, building / buying a network of other clubs, establishing relationships overseas with partner clubs and other organisations. All of this whilst Mike Ashley did the exact opposite. You can almost certainly put us ninth actually when taking all these factors into consideration, behind West Ham as well.

So how I see it is…

This 2023/24 season was astonishing, in terms of what Eddie Howe achieved against all odds, getting far more points and finishing a number of places higher than anybody could have reasonably expected.

As for the 2024/25 Premier League season, based on what clubs have spent on transfer fees and wages and so on, the natural finishing place for Newcastle United will be eighth at best.

The only reason why we can hope for, and to a degree EXPECT, better, is due to the great job Eddie Howe is doing. In overcoming the massive financial disadvantage Newcastle United currently have.

So for anybody to talk about Newcastle United ‘failing’ when you look at the money spent etc etc, it is absolutely ludicrous.