They have acres of room in FFP and that is before it starts to get massaged through shirt deals and stadium naming rights etc.

The one saving grace for us is that St Max also plays predominantly on the left and Sarr is likely available if they're shopping in the PL market and he is a more natural foil on the right. Think our "loss" is quite possibly being priced out of Gallagher should he be available. They'll be aiming for a young English core I imagine.

Do agree though that we - as will all other PL clubs for that matter - will simply hike up the price where Newcastle is concerned - White to Arsenal plus plus territory.

If it doesn’t happen we will hammer them so will we if Bruce is still there. We will hammer them anyway.

a long read, but this is the athletic article on this…interesting read

“Newcastle United, the richest club in the world.”

That new moniker is inescapable and it is everywhere. The completion of the 18-month takeover saga has made Newcastle United headline news around the globe — and not only because of the controversial involvement of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF).

It has propelled the club into a different stratosphere. After 14 years of hopelessness under Mike Ashley, aspiration is back.

On Thursday evening, the club’s official account tweeted: “AMBITION 👊”. It felt like a seminal moment.

After all, the PIF is said to be worth well in excess of £300 billion, dwarfing the value of even Manchester City or Paris Saint-Germain’s Gulf-funded owners. The Reuben Brothers, meanwhile, were ranked second in the Sunday Times Rich List 2021, with a net worth of almost £21.5 billion.

This incomprehensible wealth, in theory, makes Newcastle the most loaded club on the planet.

But do the perception and the reality marry?

Amanda Staveley, the club’s new director and public face (pictured above, with husband Mehrdad Ghodoussi) has declared an ambition to “win trophies”, including the Premier League within five to 10 years. Yet she has stressed that it will take time to evolve the club and that organic growth is needed, while sources have insisted that PIF wants to see a return on its investment in the long run.

So, that raises the question, what effect can be the new owners have on Newcastle’s on-field performance? What should their footballing priorities be? And how much, realistically, are they looking to invest during the January window?

What should the new owners do first when it comes to football?

There are myriad improvements that can be made at Newcastle in every department — but the majority will take time.

That is because the consortium is going to undertake a thorough audit of the club; identifying not only what needs changing, but analysing how best to do so.

Significant investment in infrastructure has been needed at the training ground and academy for more than a decade, and both may need to be flattened and completely rebuilt. Although these enhancements will make a material on-field difference, that will only be in the long term.

Instead, focus must shift to the team’s fortunes.

Newcastle training ground
The training ground is in serious need of modernisation (Photo: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)
It has been easy to forget, amid the whirlwind of the past few days, that Newcastle are second-bottom of the Premier League, winless this season. They have won seven of their last 37 matches and have looked like relegation fodder for much of 2021.

Although the takeover will instil optimism into the fanbase and should improve the atmosphere at St James’ Park — which will be full again for Tottenham’s visit next week — that positivity alone cannot be relied upon to keep Newcastle up.

The owners’ immediate concern must be survival. Should Newcastle pull clear of the bottom three swiftly, then goals can be reassessed, but for now, winning a match would be a minor success story in itself.

Playing reinforcements cannot arrive immediately — which instead leaves changing the head coach as the only area which could lead to a positive on-field impact.

Steve Bruce has already told The Telegraph that he would “like the chance to show the new owners what I can do”, but admits he is “realistic” that fresh owners “normally want a new manager”. His position is understood to be under threat and it feels like a matter of when, not if, Bruce is dismissed.

It would make sense to oversee a clean break from the Ashley era by ensuring Bruce is not in the home dugout against Tottenham on Sunday week, although there is still a debate internally about when to make the call.

That is primarily because, given the rapid conclusion of the takeover, no new manager is lined up, though Premier League experience is expected to be a quality sought in a head coach.

Rafa Benitez would have been the top choice, but he is now at Everton, while Mikel Arteta, also previously admired, is at Arsenal. There is no successor yet identified and so, if Bruce is sacked, Graeme Jones, the assistant head coach appointed last January, could take interim charge. He is viewed as a natural caretaker-in-waiting yet, given Newcastle’s start to the season, it would be a risk to keep Jones in temporary control for too long.

Critical to the football decision-making process, though, will also be the appointment of a sporting director. There has been an absence of footballing intelligence at a senior level at Newcastle and it is understood that the search has begun for an executive who can help transform the club. Ensuring that both the head coach/manager and the sporting director can work in tandem will be an important consideration.

Once that pair are in place, attention can switch to the January transfer window, and the first opportunity to improve the squad.

How much money can the owners put into the club? And how much will they put in?

These are two very different questions.

The short answer to the former is that they can spend a fairly substantial amount, perhaps around £200 million, before having to be concerned about any Financial Fair Play (FFP) issues.

Ashley’s frugal business model makes Newcastle the ideal club for ambitious owners to take over during the age of FFP. Justin Barnes, Ashley’s close associate, was tasked more than five years ago with streamlining Newcastle to ensure the club was in an attractive, saleable position — which he did, even if it was to the detriment of on-field fortunes.

“The Mike Ashley model was one of trying to make the club sustainable,” says Kieran Maguire, football finance lecturer at the University of Liverpool and host of the Price of Football podcast. “If you inherited a club that was losing lots of money, you’ve got no wriggle room to invest because of FFP. But with Newcastle, it’s the opposite. In the last three years (for which we have accounts), Newcastle made an overall profit of £38 million. Because Ashley was so tight, it means whoever takes over can put their foot on the accelerator.”

In the immediate term, Newcastle must consider the Premier League’s FFP regulations — UEFA’s rules may come into consideration in the long run – which come under the “Profit and Sustainability” section of the organisation’s handbook.

These are calculated on a three-year rolling basis and state that top-flight clubs are unable to incur cumulative losses of more than £105 million. This has hamstrung Everton recently, following years of lavish outlay. Any purchases must be made with FFP in mind.

The £38 million figure cited by Maguire relates to the three years until the end of 2019-20. It does not include the significantly COVID-19-affected 2020-21 campaign, when Newcastle are understood to have sustained a significant loss. Even so, the new owners still have healthy scope to invest.

Interestingly, though, when Maguire states that Newcastle could “comfortably spend £200 million without worrying about FFP”, he is not solely talking about a £200 million net outlay on transfers over three seasons. That figure includes scope for increasing salaries — Newcastle’s wage bill was £121.1 million for 2019-20, 12th in the Premier League — and other expenditure beyond transfer fees. The £200 million incorporates the £38 million profit, plus an additional £50 million of adjustments for the likes of academy allowances, and the £105 million permitted to be lost over three seasons.

In theory, they could spend far more than £200 million net on transfers.

“That £200 million is the amount of additional spending new owners can put in on top of what Newcastle spend now,” Maguire says. “They’ve got an awful lot of room to invest in talent to try to improve the product on the pitch — and that is even before they increase revenues, such as commercial and matchday. I am talking about additional spending to the Newcastle of the here and now, not the version of Newcastle the owners hope to build.”

The reason? The accounting term “amortisation”, which essentially means that the transfer fee paid for a player is spread across the duration of their contract in FFP terms. “If Newcastle sign a player for £80 million on a five-year contract, only £16 million a year of that goes towards FFP,” Maguire says. “When that is considered on a three-year rolling basis, it means you can actually spend a lot more on fees than you might initially think.”

In addition, infrastructure investment is exempt from FFP, meaning the training ground, academy, stadium and women’s team could all be improved, without negatively affecting the owners’ ability to augment the men’s first-team playing squad.

“They can do whatever they want with infrastructure investment,” Maguire says, referencing the average yearly infrastructure spend of £830,000 during Ashley’s final decade. “Over the last decade, for all of the clubs in the Premier League — including Brentford, who were in League One not so long ago — Newcastle have spent less money than everybody. By an absolute fortune. FFP says you can invest in infrastructure to your heart’s content and not a penny of it will count towards the calculations.”

Still, the message from the consortium is one of moderated ambition — even if Staveley admitted to The Athletic that the consortium have “deep pockets”.

It is understood that, in their initial business plan, drawn up before the takeover stalled last year, £250 million was set aside for investment over the first “few years”. That was not solely designated for transfers, however; it includes everything.

There will, though, be players brought into the club with the sole idea of improving the first team. Over time, the idea will be to build a side capable of competing for trophies, but that will be gradual.

The owners have far-reaching ambitions for Newcastle, but they do not expect to achieve those instantaneously. This is about managed, consistent progression.

Will it be the upcoming January window when they spend big?

There is not going to be a single, transformative transfer window — or, at least, it is not expected for January.

That does not mean, however, that there will be no money to spend. It is understood that a kitty, believed to be in the low tens of millions, is there for January if needed.

Fans have been joking that Joelinton is the club-record signing for the “richest club in the world”, but there is no indication yet that the £40 million spent on the Brazilian will be exceeded early in 2022.

Dramatic overhauls rarely take place during the mid-season window, when the market is trickier to navigate. What is more, until the senior football positions are filled, it makes little sense to drastically reshape the squad.

That is not to say that transfer discussions have not taken place. There have been regular recruitment meetings among the consortium’s football advisors, at varying levels of intensity, over the past 18 months. Before the summer of 2020, Ferran Torres and Nathan Ake were identified as potential targets, while Callum Wilson and Joe Willock were believed to have been discussed before they became Newcastle players.

Torres was said to be a target before he moved to City in the summer of 2020 (Photo: Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
But, given how quickly this transaction was eventually concluded, and with the January window not yet imminent, a whittled-down shortlist of players is not believed to exist — not one directly relevant to the positions which most keenly need strengthening.

January additions feel vital if Newcastle are to avoid another season-long struggle, even if a new manager does provide an uplift. The club did not materially strengthen during the summer window, only bringing Willock back permanently and failing to deliver the centre-back or defensive midfielder Bruce desired.

At centre-back, in particular, Newcastle lack a pacy ball-player who can initiate attacking phases consistently.

Elsewhere, Matt Ritchie, a right-winger, has been used as a left wing-back and as an out-and-out left-back. With Paul Dummett struggling for fitness and Jamal Lewis seemingly not trusted, improving the left-hand side of the defence is important.

Most pressingly, however, there is a need to recruit another goalscorer. The reliance on Wilson is such that, when he is absent, they have won two of 16 league matches. Andy Carroll departed during the summer and Dwight Gayle is the only other natural centre-forward.

These deficiencies do not come as a surprise to the consortium’s football advisors, though, and finding players who can provide a greater source of goals is viewed as essential.

Newcastle have a full 25-man squad, bizarrely complete with four goalkeepers, that may potentially curb a January splurge, too. In theory, Newcastle do not have to move players out so that they can recruit, as they could leave some out of their Premier League squad, but stockpiling does not seem a wise move.

Rather than a root-and-branch squad revamp in January, they appear more likely to wait until the summer and beyond, once the club-wide audit, which includes the player pool, is completed.

Within that review, Sean Longstaff’s contract situation will arise, given the academy graduate’s deal expires next summer. Substantive discussions over a new deal have yet to take place but, with Longstaff well known to the consortium’s advisors, that situation may change.

Staveley and her fellow directors are due to meet the squad on Monday. It is understood that key players such as Allan Saint-Maximin and Martin Dubravka have been enthused by the takeover news and, given both were promised further quality additions would be made by the previous regime, keeping Saint-Maximin away from increasingly envious clubs should prove easier, too.

How quickly, realistically, can they compete with the “Rebel Six”?

This question presumes that Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur remain the powerhouses they once were — but, even if both are underwhelming in terms of league position, they are still a long way ahead of Newcastle economically.

While Newcastle’s revenue for 2019-20 was £153 million, only the eighth-highest in the Premier League, behind the so-called “Rebel Six” and Everton (£186 million), Arsenal recouped more than double that (£345 million), and Spurs close to treble (£402 million). The six highest-earning clubs make an average of £350 million per year more than Newcastle do.

There is a huge revenue gulf for Newcastle to overcome, and that is before other ambitious clubs such as Leicester City and Everton are considered.

However, commercial revenue is definitely an area for expansion at Newcastle. That remained flat almost throughout Ashley’s tenure, and the £29.1 million generated in 2019-20 was only the 11th highest in the Premier League — behind Leicester City (£29.3 million) and Brighton (£29.5 million). The six biggest clubs earned an average of £207 million.

“There is real potential for commercial growth,” Maguire says. “Mike Ashley is a toxic brand, so domestic potential sponsors may now look to Newcastle more favourably. And, if you look at what Manchester City have done with Middle Eastern deals, I expect Newcastle to benefit from sponsorship from Saudi companies, too.

“There is a lot of catching up to do. Look at what happened at Manchester City; to catch up, you simply have to spend more, otherwise you won’t attract the best and bridge the gap. It is going to be tough.”

It will be more difficult, Maguire believes, than when Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea in 2003 or the Abu Dhabi Group purchased Manchester City in 2008.

“It was relatively easy for Abramovich — he had an open chequebook and, at the time, only two clubs, Manchester United and Arsenal, ever won the title,” Maguire says. “Neither Man City nor Chelsea really had FFP rules to limit their spending, either. For Newcastle, there are at least six ‘elite clubs’ to overcome, and it will be tricky to do that. It is going to be very expensive and it will not be instant, but it is possible.”

Even for the “world’s richest club”, winning the Premier League inside five years will not be straightforward.

(Top photo: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images

‘Football isn’t instant coffee. You have to work at it. You must grow the bean, grind it.’ Ian Holloway

This world is so corrupt. Football is a shining example and this deal adds to it in a huge way.

Knowing Newcastle they’ll probably by Ross Barclay. Bung in Danny Drinkwater if he hasn’t retired a multi.

COYP

Be hard to hang onto our youngsters next season. I'm thinking the CBs in particular. They can have Benteke for 20 mil and they can also have Roy. Heard he's free.

Red and Blue Army!