Why Newcastle United need to be shrewd in planning the Champions League squad… | OneFootball

With five weeks to go until the draw, why Newcastle United need to be shrewd in planning the Champions League squad this season (and what can be done to mitigate the situation).

(ED: This article was written before Thursday’s Alexander Isak headlines)

It’s been over two years since my last article here, a lot of water (and time) has flown under the Tyne bridges, but I have thoroughly been immersed in the joy of the first ever trophy for Newcastle United in my lifetime (and three decades plus of being a fan) amongst other life situations.

It was a joy, but even more of a relief, that Newcastle Utd made the Champions League for the second time in three seasons. The ability to push on and compete with the ‘Super League Six’ is contingent mainly on this factor to push our commercial revenue closer to theirs.

We would need to do the same again this season and maybe that’d enable us to reach a squad by next summer (over three transfer windows including the current one) which challenges for titles in both Europe and England (my biggest wish every second of every day since the takeover has been for Newcastle United to win the Premier League title in the centenary year of the last top flight title win (2026-27).

To not qualify again sets us back by another year or two or worse – lose at least one of our key star players (with what passes for ‘media’ in the football circle being puppets firmly in the pockets of Liverpool and other ‘Super League Six’ as we’ve seen recently).

Talking of Champions League squads, the club does find itself in a pickle this time.

Every club needs to have four out of the (over 21 yrs) 25 man squad as “club homegrown” players and the fewer you have, the more players you go without in your senior squad. With the sales of Elliot Anderson and Sean Longstaff, as well as the leaving of Paul Dummett last summer, we’ve lost all our over 21 club homegrown players. The result being that NUFC’s set to play the UCL with a squad of 21 players (something that’s unlikely to be the case with any of the other 35 competing clubs) plus any U21s like Lewis Miley we may choose to field.

Given the increased number of fixtures, not to mention competing on four fronts, this makes the task of progression to the knockouts (with it bringing more glory/joy/revenues) quite hard. With a full set of 25 including 4+ incoming this summer (*touchwood) we should’ve looked to emulate Arsenal/Villa from last year, but as things stand, it looks rather tough even before the draw throws the inevitable toughest matchups our way (PSG away first up? Well that might well motivate our team after how the knockout place was stolen two seasons back, but I digress..). So is there something that can be done to mitigate this situation and maximise our playing squad? Yes there is and I have a couple of suggestions towards the same.

Firstly, UEFA regulations require us to be down to 21 senior players but they don’t specify that we must have three goalkeepers in the squad. Its up to us if we wish to take that risk to have fewer. While it seems that keeping only a 33 year old and a 36 year old, in Pope and Dubravka, is a definite risk, an injury to one would leave us with the choice of either a U21 GK on the bench or going without one, there’s lesser risk of both keepers getting injured during the Aug-Dec period with the transfer window opening again in Jan.

However, if we were to bring in a younger GK like Trafford/another who’s good enough to start games we could take this risk and drop Dubravka from the squad (and perhaps play him in the League Cup) thereby giving us an additional outfield player. This is a risk we should definitely take as its impossible that we won’t have outfield players with injuries during a 3+ month period from Sept international break till first week of Jan when we play EVERY midweek (unless we get knocked out early out of the Carabao Cup – as defending champs) even if Eddie Howe’s learnt his lesson and will rotate more players and use more U21 players for 15 mins at end of games unlike two seasons back. Those players would then miss subsequent UCL games reducing our squad size even more for those games. Winnable games might become draws or worse due to player fatigue and it could carry over into weekend PL games. Having 19 outfield players (as opposed to 18+3 GK’s) in the UCL squad is a MUST. A GK sacrifice needs to be done.

Second, Eddie needs to play our better U21 players a lot more in pre-season. If the likes of Leo Shahar, Sean Neave, Alex Murphy, Trevor Sanusi etc can be used to give key players a rest in the last 20 mins of UCL games at home, then the key players stand a better chance of playing the full 90 min in away games. Here too there’s a gamble we could take. Joe White’s now 22 and in the last year of his contract and back from being on loan most of the last two years. He’s never performed consistently but always shows sparks of what he could’ve been like. If we were to include him in the UCL squad as a homegrown player we’d get 22 in the squad. He’d only be used in a dire predicament like Bruno or Tonali needing to come off but he’d be available and could even give them a rest if we’re 2-0 up with 15 min to go. We needn’t even use him in PL squad (unless like last season we’re struggling to complete the 25 senior squad and back then our hands were tied on incomings due to PSR and Botman and Lascelles were out long-term), just not send him out on loan and add him to the UCl squad.

With one GK less and the addition of White plus Miley (who’s good enough to be a senior squad member, just happens to be U21), we’d effectively be like a 24 player squad (I know it’d be 23 but how often do you end up using your 3rd GK in UCL?) and it might just be enough to get us to make the knockouts even if a few players get injured as the games pile on.

We did have the option of signing back Woodman on a free before Liverpool did and we’d have had a 3rd GK as a club homegrown player at no additional cost but that boat has sailed (also makes me question whether either Mitchell or Howe or anyone else at NUFC foresaw this problem last May and started any planning for it). There’s the similarly grim prospect of signing a 36 year old Tim Krul as the 3rd GK to increase one outfield player spot (if we did that we could set a record that’ll likely never be broken of the highest combined age of UCL squad GKs ever at 106 years!).

I also want to dwell on the importance of club homegrown players. While we’ve made £15m on Longstaff’s sale (and most of the extra PSR gains from a ‘pure profit’ sale will likely go into his replacement or other new squad members immediately) should we’ve kept him just for UCL where he was at least good enough to be given starts in case one of our starting three star midfielders couldn’t?

Qualifying for UCL knockouts would’ve brought more revenue than his sale did, though one can’t say if his presence would be pivotal to secure it. Every time a club homegrown player leaves it brings more issues than we foresee at that moment. Joelinton for example is a unique balance of physicality, ball winning and retention and passing it forward that’d be hard to replace in two or three years time on the left side of midfield.

In Elliot Anderson we had the near exact replica in that position with better ball playing abilities, as he demonstrated towards the end of the 2023-24 season, turning around games vs West Ham and Forest as a 2nd half sub, as well as all of last season at Forest (he had amongst the best ball recoveries and tackling stats per 90 min in the entire PL last season) & he was club homegrown and 20 years old (don’t even need to mention the Vlad issue we’ve been saddled with due to his transfer) so would’ve played that role for a dozen years for us, not to mention he has greater positional flexibility than Big Joe.

IMAGO/NurPhoto

Not a day goes by that I don’t wish for Anderson to run down in his contract at Forest and rejoin us in three years time (the lack of a buyback option in his sale also stings!). Club homegrown players are also those who don’t hanker for a move (as playing for Newcastle’s as good as it can get for them), they’ll stay on lesser wages and put their life on the line for the club over the 90 min.

Remember Longstaff playing with an injured foot and permanent pain through the 2nd half of the 2023-24 PL season – while taking abuse from large sections of the fans for a drop in his level of play, just because we were struggling to get a decent XI out on the field at times? Try getting that from too many non- “Local Heroes.” He even offered to leave this summer so the club could get some PSR funds for transfers. He is 27 years and still potentially in his prime and hopefully this won’t be another transfer that comes back to bite us hard.

Regardless, with the battles we’re facing in getting top quality talent over the line this summer, with ‘Super League Six’ throwing money at our targets – knowing they’ll use some loophole in the PSR regulations and face no consequences, unlike Newcastle with a target permanently on its back, it seems there needs to be some innovative thinking to help us go further in all competitions this year, else it’s going to be another roller-coaster season (isn’t it always) at Newcastle United.

Trevan Sanusi

And whether Eddie’s comfortable with it or not in the short term, whether he feels it puts the careers of the young talents at risk, he HAS to trust in and throw the academy talents out there NOW. One of my biggest wishes last season was for Sanusi to play in a dozen or so games and have a breakout season like Lewis Miley the season before (who was thrown out there in an emergency and showed his worth) as he provides something different – more in the vein of Saint-Maximin. Somewhere he’s likely feeling a bit down that except for a cameo vs Chelsea in the League Cup and vs lower league opponents in a couple of cup games, he wasn’t really given a chance after a really great pre-season.

Now we’re in the situation again that we might have to throw a couple of youngsters into the cauldron of UCL games like we did Miley. Can we at least prepare for it while we have five pre-season games to come, by giving them a disproportionate chance? We need to keep more of them instead of sending them out on loan where, for some reason, most of them don’t get game time, as they stand to improve far more by training with the senior squad and Eddie Howe than at most clubs in the Football League or Europe. Miley, Osula, Sanusi have shown that. Hope someone at the club’s giving this some food for thought.