Let’s hope my Newcastle United fears are quickly allayed after writing this | OneFootball

As Eddie Howe sat down this (Tuesday) morning for his pre-match briefing ahead of the Carabao Cup trip to Nottingham Forest, he will have been braced for the inevitable questions regarding Newcastle’s activity, or lack thereof, in the transfer market.

I imagine the frustrations felt by the fans around the Marc Guehi pursuit and the absolute silence on any sort of attacking recruit, are amplified tenfold for the man who stands most to benefit from any incomings.

Howe was philosophical regarding the chances of incomings ahead of the transfer deadline and non-committal on the club’s stance on signing Marc Guehi.

In all honesty I don’t think anyone would have expected anything different from Howe. He’s demonstrated himself to be adept at handling difficult questions from Day one in the job, bombarded with requests for his opinions on the Saudi ownership in his opening press conference.

Taking a step back however, what is the reality of Newcastle’s current squad and how important is it to recruit the centre-back and right-winger that had been touted as the club’s transfer priorities for this transfer window?

Since the takeover was completed in October 2021, Newcastle united have signed 21 senior players with combined transfer fees reported to be in the region of £428 million.

Breaking these signings down loosely by position Newcastle United have signed:

4 goalkeepers

3 right-backs

2 left-backs,

2 midfielders

1 right-winger

2 left-wingers

4 strikers.

The right-winger in this list is of course Yankuba Minteh, who has since departed without ever pulling on the shirt outside of a press photo, an unfortunate casualty of PSR rules.

Given that fact, it becomes immediately apparent that the only positions that Newcastle have not got a player available for selection, who were recruited since Howe took charge, are the right-wing and a right footed centre-back.

So, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that these are indeed the areas of need for any future recruitment.

Before discussing the impact of any potential additions to the squad, it’s prudent to look at the options we already have available for these positions.

Our number one starter on the right side of our centre-back pairing has been one of the easiest selection decisions for Howe over the past couple of seasons. Fabian Schar has been one of Newcastle’s key men under Eddie Howe. The confidence on the ball he always possessed, has been enhanced by a steely defensive determination since Howe took over.

However, the fact remains that Schar turns 33 this December and concerns that time will catch up with him sooner rather than later are not unfounded.

Our other natural player in this position is long serving club captain Jamaal Lascelles. Lascelles featured more heavily last season with the prolonged absence of Sven Botman and in my opinion delivered one of his best seasons in years. Despite this, there is no escaping that Jamaal will never be the best in possession and if he is partnered with Dan Burn, we become more apprehensive with our build up play from the back. Add to this, Lascelles is months away from a playing return as he recovers from his knee injury, then you have to consider the next man up. That man is Emil Krafth and the issue with build-up when Lascelles plays doesn’t go away with our third option in this position. The Swede has acquitted himself admirably when asked to move inside and his performances have certainly improved in this role when compared to his time under Steve Bruce (hasn’t everyone’s?). Unfortunately, as Bournemouth’s press showed at the weekend, we are severely weakened by Schar’s absence as Nick Pope’s glaring weakness as a keeper is when he has the ball at his feet and the defence can’t be relied on to play their way out.

Next is the right-wing position, where for the past several seasons we have almost exclusively relied upon two men, Jacob Murphy and Miguel Almiron. Jacob Murphy is one of my favourite players in the current squad but it is more to do with what I perceive he brings to the squad. From the outside looking in, I see someone who is prepared to do anything he can to help the team. Playing out of position, absolutely. Subbed on and then off again in the same half, not a problem. Murphy is again a player whose performances have gone up levels under Eddie Howe, and while he does contribute goals and assists for the team, the numbers aren’t at the elite levels and he often gets the final pass/shot not quite right.

Miggy is another favourite of mine and seemingly of Howe’s. He has run tirelessly for the team since he arrived in 2019, and over the past few seasons has done so with much more purpose. For about six months back in 2022/23 he even added some end product to his game, I think all of us will look back fondly on that season where he shut Jack Grealish up.

That end product though has fallen away over the past year (injuries haven’t helped) and alongside it frustrations with Miggy’s reluctance to go on the outside and use his right-foot have returned. Ultimately though, you look at Murphy and Miggy and you have two players who with the greatest respect are “squad players” at best.

The third option here is to move Gordon or Barnes onto the right-side of the attack, indeed this combination led to our equaliser at the weekend and in the short term might be our best option. However, while he has shown he is prepared to be a little flexible with how he deploys his personnel, Howe does seem to like to keep players in their preferred roles and Barnes and Gordon are both stronger off the left.

Getting back to the question of what the impact of additions to the squad could be, the picture does become much clearer. I have spent the past 18 months screaming for us to strengthen the right side of our attack (I even wrote an article about it earlier this summer), but as we have continued in the agonisingly slow pursuit of Marc Guehi, my opinion has shifted to consider this as the main area we need to recruit.

Newcastle scored a club record, in the Premier League era, number of goals last season, with the players we currently have in the squad, only the top three in the table scored more.

When you consider that we will have players like Tonali and Willock to add into the mix this year, who were unavailable for most of last season, there is no reason to think we can’t find ways to score goals again this season.

Does this area of the pitch need strengthening? Yes.

Can we probably survive one more year with the players we have? Probably.

Schar’s suspension on the other hand has highlighted how much we struggle to maintain control of the ball.

Signing a centre-back, be it Marc Guehi or someone else, should be the absolute priority for the rest of the week.

Guehi is one of the strongest centre-backs in the Premier League at carrying the ball out from the back and while not quite as good a passer as his old partner Joachim Andersen, he is very capable of switching the play.

If we do move on from our pursuit of the Palace stopper, we need to ensure that any targets possess these qualities, something Howe alluded to in his press conference where he called for making sure you sign the “right players.”

As a final note on the summer transfer business, I think at this point if we fail to secure Marc Guehi’s signature before September, it is very embarrassing for new Sporting Director Paul Mitchell. Since the new regime took charge, the majority of our transfer dealings have played out privately until the deals were in their final throws. The one exception to this being the signing of Sven Botman.

The fact that we have very publicly pursued Guehi now for a number of weeks when some of our rivals have continued to sign players with little fuss, doesn’t build confidence for his ability to sell the club and the project, something that to this point has gone well with players like Bruno, Isak and Botman.

What would be even worse would be to reach September with no new centre-back or winger and leave the squad at the mercy of injury and form for the next few months. To sign one player in the rest of the window would be adequate, to sign no one would be negligent.

Let’s hope that in the hours after writing this on Tuesday, my fears are allayed, and we wake up on Wednesday to shifty social media videos of Guehi arriving at the training ground in a Mercedes van for his medical!