The Rise of Newcastle

Newcastle have been mighty impressive this season and perhaps are ahead of schedule on crashing the party at the top of the table

When it was confirmed that Newcastle was going to be majority owned by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia it was just a matter of how long until Newcastle United joined the party of clubs that enjoyed a spending edge at the top of the table.

What was uncertain was how long it would take and it appears that we now have that answer.

Their rise hasn’t followed the same method as Chelsea or Manchester City before. Both of those teams spent massive amounts of money in the transfer market which dwarfed what the other teams were doing. Newcastle have spent, but it has been somewhat surprisingly restrained from my expectations that were based on Chelsea or Manchester City in similar situations.

This isn’t to say they haven’t spent money, because they have. According to transfermakt they have spent €266.85m over the last two seasons (including both summer and winter) which puts them as the 5th highest spenders in that period. On net spend they haven’t made any significant sales and rise to 2nd.

That is still a far cry from what Chelesa and Manchester City did. I wrote about that in the context of Arsenal buying their way to the top of the table now but it is a similar story for Newcastle.

13 of 15, then we can talk title

I think the takeaway from this, is that yes they have spent a lot but they have really maximized their spending rather than taking a more shotgun approach buying up any and every player.

The Rise of Newcastle

Newcastle before the takeover was a very poor team, spending the majority of their time doing just enough to avoid relegation. Since coming back up from their relegation in 2015-2016 they finished 10th, 13th, 13th, 12th, and then 11th last year.

This is the 10 match running points total for Newcastle from 2019-20 to last year:

They survived each season but did so while being a very below-average team.