The damage Newcastle’s disastrous summer could do to their wider project | OneFootball

It was as early as the first days of June that Eddie Howe and his staff feared this summer was going to be “a big problem” for Newcastle United.

The reason then was not yet failed purchases, the departure of sporting director Paul Mitchell or even Alexander Isak. Or at least just Isak. Newcastle already knew about the Swede’s ambitions to leave for months. Now, the same fears were growing about Tino Livramento and Anthony Gordon, with the added concern that any unrest could lead to more agitation in the dressing room. The mood was so foreboding that Howe’s staff even asked others in football about potential solutions.

It was a huge shift from the satisfaction felt mere weeks before, and the end of a season that was the club’s best in decades. The Carabao Cup closed that long wait for a trophy, bringing a sense of release around the club. The final-day qualification for a second Champions League campaign in three seasons then seemed to take that further; to embolden everyone, and afford the club the financial assurance to really press on. There was no longer a PSR need to sell stars like Isak.

open image in gallery

Newcastle enjoyed their best campaign in decades, winning the Carabao Cup and securing Champions League qualification (PA Wire)

There were instead a host of other latent problems. Almost everything has gone wrong, from start to finish and top to bottom, and especially in transfer negotiations.

The noise around Newcastle on social media no longer sees human rights groups criticising the Saudi state owners to the same prominence. It is instead jokes, and memes, about how comically haphazard this summer has been. Newcastle can't seem to buy what they need as stars want to leave. Worse, transfer pursuits seem to end in absurd ways, a bad joke, with the same punchline.

As one figure at a rival club enjoyed quipping when it became clear Benjamin Sesko was opting for Manchester United, “you can have the most serious owners but you’ll still be Newcastle, not Man United”.

That was said with some mischief, but is also a touch unfair. This Newcastle’s structure is not what a progressive club should look like.

open image in gallery

Benjamin Sesko became the latest star to reject Newcastle in favour of a “big six” team (PA Wire)

That was all too clear from the start of the window, and the departure of Mitchell, since they’ve been negotiating transfers without a sporting director. Mitchell had immediately caused friction with Howe on his arrival in 2024, but the recruitment guru’s most pressing concern was the “trading model”. He realised just how much needed to be changed to make Newcastle PSR-compliant, right up to the strategy on player profile. The club had to be more nimble.

That may be a surprise given Newcastle’s success in signings like Isak, Sandro Tonali and Bruno Guimaeres, but most of those came through paying big out of PSR headroom following Mike Ashley’s departure, as much as any market insight. As it was, Mitchell didn’t sign anyone at all.

Some sources relay another frustration, which is the long time it takes to do anything. Insiders talk of how any major decision has had to go through multiple layers and meetings way above the football side, often back to Riyadh. If it concerned a transfer target, one source complains, Newcastle found that rival clubs had stolen ahead in the time it took for them to finally go all in.

If such bureaucracy sounds at odds with the vacuum of this summer, there is actually a strange consistency to it all. PIF have naturally been actively concerned with concrete financial decisions, as befits their status as an infinitely wealthy fund. They’ve just not been immersed in the minutiae, as befits their remoteness. Even players have complained of a lack of visibility from the hierarchy, with no apparent overarching strategy. Former part-owner Amanda Staveley had many detractors in football but her personality formed a culture.

This may eventually change with the arrivals of Ross Wilson as sporting director and David Hopkinson as chief executive, but the current situation has inevitably exacerbated the chaos. Club insiders have even joked about who actually said “no” to Liverpool’s first offer for Isak.

Howe and his staff currently have much more power than managers are usually afforded by modern clubs, and are described as “almost running everything”. Such concerns have been accentuated by questions about Howe’s powers of persuasion outside the training pitch. A number of targets have found they haven’t fully synced with the manager. That happens everywhere, but what is conspicuous this summer is how often it has been mentioned. It’s all the more jarring since Howe has done the hard part of restoring the actual football team to Champions League level.

open image in gallery

A number of transfer targets have not fully synced with Eddie Howe (PA Wire)

This was supposed to be what Saudi Arabia always wanted, the biggest stages. There are instead new doubts about the club’s very place in that state strategy.

Much has been made of how PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan could be decisive in the Isak saga, given his geopolitical clout. And yet that comes amid increasing talk he has been superseded in Saudi sports strategy by Turki Alalshikh. The rumours about the boxing supremo buying a club - which includes speculation about Sheffield Wednesday - have not gone away. They now run hand in hand with assertions that the Saudis always just wanted one of the biggest names, in Liverpool or Manchester United.

The frugality at Newcastle is certainly a contrast to the bombast around other Saudi projects, from boxing right up to the 2034 World Cup and the Saudi Pro League project shaping its build-up. The strategy now looks to be about bringing everything into the kingdom, rather than spreading money outside.

open image in gallery

Newcastle chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan (centre) is governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PA Archive)

Those with knowledge of PIF nevertheless insist they remain fully committed to Newcastle, and that some of this summer’s issues - the bureaucracy, the wait for appointments - are just in-keeping with a thorough emphasis on sound governance. Club sources have meanwhile constantly pointed to PSR restricting investment.

And yet that very stance only makes the lack of action elsewhere more inexplicable. Why have the ownership not moved on easy PSR - and PR - solutions like sponsoring the training ground, let alone big projects like the stadium? There are more delays on announcements there.

Maybe most conspicuously, we’re not seeing the same vaunted headlines about investment in the region, an aspect that had repeatedly been raised to justify the highly controversial takeover. There are of course still many reasons to oppose a state owning a football club, above all on human rights grounds.

open image in gallery

Newcastle club sources have constantly pointed to PSR restricting investment (REUTERS)

And yet now, unexpectedly in this case, there’s another.

There’s clearly an inherent risk in a club’s strategy being dependent on a state’s economic policy, and the wider forces of geopolitics.

It might even play into the Isak saga. In a normal situation, there would be strong logic for an upwardly mobile club to sell Isak. Newcastle could actually enhance the wider squad, in the way Liverpool did after Philippe Coutinho and Juventus used to make a habit of in the 1990s. They even sold Zinedine Zidane for that purpose.

Except, on one side, it’s possible the PIF leadership get too hung up on pride and status, and what a sale would “say”. On the other, selling Isak only works if you have the structure in place to prepare for it.

Newcastle, as their staff feared early on, evidently do not. This certainly isn't what it was supposed to be.

And yet there’s another irony. If you took this summer on its own basic terms, it wouldn’t actually be that bad. A good side now has the additions of Anthony Elanga and Aaron Ramsdale, with the sale of Sean Longstaff for £15m, amid some promising other work incoming. And yet, as Howe and his staff intimidated early on, almost everything about it feels “a big problem.