Newcastle United all but secured their Premier League status for another season at the weekend when they beat Leicester City 2-1 at the King Power Stadium.
The Magpies have won their last three consecutive league matches to draw themselves out of relegation trouble and plans can begin to take place towards the campaign.
One crazy statistic does pinpoint where the North-East club need to focus on improving ahead of next season and that is the attacking department.
Remarkably playmaker Ayoze Perez is now the club’s leading scorer this season with six goals across all competitions, a player that has received a lot of criticism at times.
That statistic shows that manager Rafael Benitez has worked absolute wonders to get them up to 10th in the league table.
However, it’s impossible to imagine a club sustaining themselves in top flight without a recognised goalscorer and they need to fix that major issue in the summer.
Newcastle need to fork out on a top centre-forward for next season, someone that can hit 15-plus goals if they really want to start improving.
Benitez’s defensive prowess, organisation and experience has played a massive role in ensuring his side have avoided a second relegation from the Premier League in three years.
However, the club need to open their eyes to see he can’t be expected to work on such a thin squad and deserves money to seriously revamp the attacking department.
Perez (six), Dwight Gayle (five) and Joselu (four) simply haven’t scored enough goals this campaign despite the impressive feat of staying in the division.
Newcastle must now build on this solid platform next season and it’s blatantly obvious where the club must invest.