- PLUS: The punishment that should be brought in for mouthy managers, and why Arne Slot has inadvertently painted himself into a corner at Liverpool
- Sign up to Mail+ today to join more than 130,000 subscribers and get exclusive access to Ian Ladyman’s must-read column every Thursday
At the start of what has felt like a huge week for Newcastle came possibly the most depressing bulletin of the whole transfer window.
Manager Eddie Howe confirmed that yet another talented Newcastle player had been moved on for reasons other than football.
Before Newcastle kicked Arsenal emphatically out through the front door of St James’ Park on Wednesday night, 26-year-old Lloyd Kelly had slipped quietly out the back.
Kelly – a defender only signed from Bournemouth last summer on a free transfer – joined Juventus on loan and will sign permanently for £20million at the season’s end.
He joins Elliot Anderson – £35m to Nottingham Forest – and Yankuba Minteh – £30m to Brighton – who were sold last summer and all in the name of staying the right side of the Premier League’s financial regulations.
We can argue all day long about this. There are those who will rail persistently about the failures of the spending rules, about how they restrict competition and put a lid on ambition. And they are broadly right.
Equally, without any kind of restrictions at all, a club like Newcastle – backed by Saudi Arabia – would by now have had Jude Bellingham, Mohamed Salah and Vinicius Junior on million-pound-a-week contracts and everybody else would be playing a different kind of sport.
What is beyond doubt is that until something gives, until such time the Premier League and European rules become smarter, more flexible and more nuanced, a club like Newcastle will remain stuck, held back by the limitations of its infrastructure and its own ability to make money.
And this is why this week we have all been looking at artist’s impressions of a new Newcastle United stadium.
Nobody has yet called it the Wembley of the North or asked the taxpayer to help pay for it but – with a predicted capacity of 70,000 – it is starting to feel as fundamental to Newcastle as a new Old Trafford would be to Manchester United.
Newcastle’s season remains progressive. Sixth in the Premier League and now in the final of the Carabao Cup.
But that is progress that has Howe’s name on it and has come against a background of relative parsimony as Newcastle have tried to claw back some of the money spent in the early days of Gulf ownership.
Howe’s team struggled last season to remain competitive. The weight of Champions League and domestic fixtures proved too great.
So they needed to come again this season but had no choice to do so on the back of a negative summer spend.
At exactly the time it should have been growing – in terms of depth and quality – Howe’s squad was actually doing exactly the opposite.
And this cannot go on. Not if Newcastle wish to be what we have long thought they should be. Competitive and compelling and successful and full of stories.
Newcastle haven’t won a domestic trophy for 70 years, which is the kind of thing you have to say twice to really believe.
They have much of what they need in place now. But they will not be successful consistently until they find a way to make more money.
They are the Tottenham of 2025, only with owners who once they have earned it will be more than happy to spend it.
Tottenham are always a good reference point in conversations like this. Their stadium is a wonderful thing.
You have to visit it to understand it. It’s phenomenal in every way. But it’s also a cash machine.
White Hart Lane turned over £1m every match day. The new place does £6m a game.
Times that by 19 Premier League games and throw in cup matches, European fixtures, American football, rugby league and pop concerts and you can see a road to a new kind of future stretching out before you.
This is what a new stadium does for Newcastle. This is the road they need to walk. Because it allows them to build on fanaticism and obsession. It allows them to milk and squeeze an audience born to the creed of the black and white.
Naming rights deals can help with all this. Expanding St James’ Park can help with all this. The club are looking at the latter as an option, too. But neither will open the door as wide as Newcastle really need it to go.
Few people ever go to St James’ Park without an impression being left. It looked and sounded marvellous on Wednesday.
But if there really is an opportunity to start again on almost the same plot of land, it surely must be taken.
This is the crossroads to which Premier League rules have delivered Newcastle. If they make the wrong choice on this, it won’t be Lloyd Kelly they sell but – not now, but eventually – it will be somebody like Alexander Isak.
BAN MOUTHY MANAGERS FOR A MONTH
Fabian Hurzeler, the Brighton manager, has been booked five times this season and sent from the dugout once.
He has said that he must learn but he doesn’t seem to have.
The young German is not alone. Andoni Iraola at Bournemouth and Julen Lopetegui, recently sacked by West Ham, also have four bookings to their name out of a tally of 42 cards racked up by a total of 20 Premier League managers this season.
It’s clear that something is wrong. Managers cannot be booked for fouls or handballs. They can only be cautioned for what they say, so it seems that they continue to set the very worst example to their own players and indeed the wider football community.
It’s unacceptable and unnecessary and shames our sport. Many of them give the appearance of being out of control and indeed above the law.
Which, largely, they are. Punishments handed down to touchline offenders are piffling. Small fines and one-match touchline bans if they are really unlucky.
These are sanctions that don’t work. A team doesn’t suffer if their manager is in the stands and kept from the dressing room at half-time for a single game.
It would be different if they were told to stay away for a month. That may make Hurzeler and the rest think again.
SLOT’S PROBLEM OF HIS OWN MAKING
Arne Slot says he won’t judge the success of Liverpool’s season by how many trophies they win.
The problem is that that he has set the bar so high that absolutely everybody else now will.
LOPETEGUI’S CROSSED WIRES
Graham Potter’s start to life as a West Ham manager has been decent enough to suggest the club have made the right appointment, even if there is still some regret within that things didn’t turn out better for his predecessor Julen Lopetegui.
West Ham sources tell me Lopetegui tried to buy into the traditions and history of the club in a way that surprised them, even becoming the first manager in memory to turn up without being asked for an annual dinner hosted by the club’s charity arm.
On the pitch, sadly, things were less joined-up with some players complaining they were often drilled in a certain way of playing during the week, only to turn up on match day morning to discover that plans had changed.
CUP CALENDAR HELPS NO ONE
FA Cup weekend begins on Friday when Manchester United host Leicester and ends on Tuesday when Nottingham Forest go to Exeter.
That’s also the night that Manchester City play Real Madrid in the Champions League and is certainly an inventive way for the FA to divert eyes away from its own competition.
Coming next: FA Cup final to be played on Christmas Day. At midnight.
ARSENAL, HUMBLED
Declan Rice was running about looking for fights late on Wednesday night.
That may look OK when you are beating the Premier League champions on a Sunday, less so when you have just flunked your third big cup game in the space of a month.
It’s been a big week for Arsenal, for good and for bad.
