It's Déjà Vu All Over Again!

We might be 2.0, but Paul's sceptical that anything's changed compared to this time last year

As a specialist in long range planning I was delighted when I was asked to write this article today, for weekend release, to consider the current strategy of the club and the competence of the men at the top of the Toon.

I am sure that I am not the only one who is getting a strange feeling of déjà vu. It seems almost inconceivable, though sadly predictable, that for the second year in a row we have buckled late in the transfer market to lose our best player and then find ourselves scrabbling around to see who is available at the last knockings, like a desperate youth at the disco as Phyllis Nelson is about to come through the speakers (one for the old timers there).

After the seismic trauma of the Isak saga, the somewhat client local press have spent pretty much the entire year telling us how 2026 will be so different because we now have a CEO and Sporting Director in place and our business will be conducted in a measured and intentional way and that no sale would be sanctioned unless it was on our terms.

However, we are now just over a week away from the new season and we are apparently still in the market for anything up to four players and hunting around for the next Granit Xhakalike to bring some experience to our depleted ranks, as if the departure of Guimarães has come as a complete surprise, despite it being heavily trailed all summer.

The lack of forward planning is rather startling to behold. In the same vein, it was obvious to anyone paying attention that Eddie Howe had lost his mojo and, unlike Austin Powers, was unlikely to get it back. So leaving the ball in his court to choose his timing of departure was rather weak sauce and has now regrettably left us scrambling to find the right players who can dance to Matthias’ tune.

It is pretty much axiomatic in any successful enterprise that your people are your most important asset and within a football team you can multiply that by a thousand. So to lose your top talent with no short to medium term replacement lined up is mind-numbingly poor planning and an incredibly high risk approach.

Wilson may have seen Mandy and Mehrdad coming when he took their pants down for Anderson but he appears to have lost his powers of foresight since. It is also interesting that the club has reduced its talent base and reset its ambitions downwards at the same time as significantly increasing its prices - a challenging business model for sure…

It all makes me wonder whether there was any coherent strategy beyond taking a punt on youngsters so inexperienced that to misquote one disgraced antipodean painter you can’t guess what they are yet! However, in all fairness, in the case of Seany Steur it looks like we may have unearthed a Dutch Master, and Bazoumana Touré might be the most exciting winger we have had since Laurent Robert. If he can stick a few 30-yard fee kicks in the top corner that would certainly be a bonus.

One kind of player that we don’t seem to be planning for is a new striker; it is entirely possible that our season will stand or fall on whether Osula can continue his purple patch at the end of last season or whether it was all just a fugazi. You would certainly hope not, as Will has many great attributes and consistency would be the whole cake not just the icing. We also have a glimmer of hope that DR Congo has prescribed the right medicine for Wissa and he is certainly looking sharper than before. We desperately need him to be clinical once again.

Last season’s last minute buy, Big Nick, remains an enigma at this stage and it will be fascinating to see if his compatriot can extract what is needed from the man they used to call Woltemessi. The only resemblance I can detect at the moment is that they both operate at walking pace

We may not have a fully formulated strategy but at least we have a catchphrase. Still, it’s not sure whether Newcastle 2.0 is a retroactive post-rationalisation of being squashed by the football authorities and the Cartel Six, a LinkedIn wanker soundbite, or a premonition that we will end up in what they used to call the 2nd Division

Further to previous laments about the Big Six Cartel not getting much coverage in mainstream media, it is interesting to see that there has been more widespread comment on the subject this week, as over £1bn of talent has been siphoned off from the small 14 in the last year alone and the gap between the haves and the have nots has only seemed to get inexorably wider. It does seem like this might become a topic of wider discussion as the season progresses. Whether that makes any difference or not is a moot point.

It is to be hoped that we don’t get a graphic depiction of the gulf in allowed resources on Sunday 23rd. Remembering last season’s game where we dragged ourselves back into it, only to be mugged at the death, it would be nice if this time we don’t have to blame it on the boogie and Jaissle turns out to be a come from behind kind of guy

KBO

Paul Wilkinson