Let us start with a footballing curiosity: the substitutes’ bench for Newcastle United in their latest capitulation — goalkeepers aside — cost considerably more than Chelsea’s, the Champions League winners.
Somehow, and this figure really does need repeating, it cost £137 million to assemble a group of outfield players deemed incapable of helping Newcastle in their latest game, their tenth without a win in the Premier League this season. It is the second worst start to a top-flight campaign in the club’s history.
Chelsea’s bench — minus the fee for Kepa Arrizabalaga — cost only £76 million, but then Chelsea, under Roman Abramovich, have learnt how to do well in the transfer market and have developed an outstanding academy.
It felt like a reminder of those facts and figures was needed, as reality kicked in inside St James’ Park on Saturday, during a truly crushing defeat. The villains, Steve Bruce and Mike Ashley, have gone. Who now to shout at? All eyes are finally on a team that has much of the same Sky Bet Championship feel it had back in 2017, when it was promoted.
“It’s a culmination of poor recruitment for years barring a couple of players and dreadful retention of players who are just not good enough,” Alan Shearer, the former Newcastle striker, said. “It was cheaper to keep them than replace them. They had five players out there who were in the Championship five years ago.”
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It is worth putting on the record here that Bruce did not sign Joelinton (£40 million, 60 Premier League starts, six goals) or Miguel Almirón (£20 million, 79 Premier League starts, eight goals). He was there for just over two years of the 14 that Ashley oversaw. Bruce had his failings — of team style, development and delivery of message — but he did keep the club up twice (in 13th and 12th) and managed to persuade Ashley, after numerous arguments, to sign Callum Wilson.
Ashley was deeply uncomfortable with a deal that broke his preferred practice of signing players aged 25 and under, and it cost £20 million. His annoyance only softened when Wilson started scoring goals that helped keep the club up. Right now, without Wilson, Newcastle’s plight would look even more perilous.
Amanda Staveley owns 10 per cent of Newcastle United through PCP Capital Partners and has a management contract to run the club. It is not known how long for. She is on the board but is not the chief executive.
In reality the club does not have one, although Lee Charnley, the managing director who signed off that £137 million for the outfield players on the bench is still in post. They do not have a sports director and they do not have a manager. The absence of such figures accelerates any downward trajectory towards the Championship, a league that most likely they have not heard of in Saudi Arabia, whose public investment fund (PIF) now owns 80 per cent of Tyneside’s only Football League club..
Newcastle, with a ground that still smells of the former owner’s sports shop, are in a much greater mess than has been realised amid the celebration of that ownership change. The silent emptying of seats inside St James’ Park on Saturday in the game’s closing stages suggested that many did really believe the exit of Bruce would transform the club’s fortunes. It was never going to be quite that simple.
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Graeme Jones, the interim manager whose previous post was with Luton Town, reverted to a version of Rafa Benítez-lite in his selection and formation, five at the back and playing very deep, but that ship has sailed. Other teams have got better, Newcastle’s has just got older. They have failed to develop their defence in 4½ years. It is wrong to say they have not spent money, it is just their recruitment strategy was as poor as Shearer suggests.
It is understandable then that Newcastle are moving with caution in their appointments, given their lack of a successful structure. There is also an absence of football knowledge on the board doing the interviewing of potential key arrivals. Added to that is the fact that the head office is now in Riyadh. Decisions must be signed off in a different country by the PIF board. Newcastle really are sailing in wild waters.
The last thing Jones, Staveley — who took her son to his first Newcastle game since the purchase of the club — and a defeated looking bunch of players needed was too bump into Chelsea.
Reece James, who joined Chelsea when he was six, scored two superb second-half goals. Callum Hudson-Odoi, who joined Chelsea when he was seven, was influential in the creation of the first. Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who joined the club when he was eight, set up the second. Jorginho scored a cheeky penalty for the third.
The difference between the sides, and indeed the clubs, is light years right now.
