Chris Waugh has been speaking on Pod on the Tyne about how much work Newcastle United’s owners have to do at the club.
It doesn’t take much more than a glance around the training ground at Benton to learn that it’s in dire need of an upgrade, as only until a couple of years ago, Newcastle players were using wheelie bins as ice baths.
Will Newcastle's new owners lead the club to success?
Yes
No
Amanda Staveley herself has even admitted that the training ground is awful, and now that the consortium have attended their first match and sacked Steve Bruce, they can slowly move onto other areas of the club that need improving.
Waugh reveals what someone near the consortium had to say about what they have to work with.
“I spoke to someone not involved with the consortium, but who was in the director’s box yesterday [Sunday], first thing this morning, and they basically said to me, there’s just nothing there. They’re just basically saying that you’ve got to build from so much.
“The scale of the task ahead, if Newcastle genuinely are going to even think about challenging for the top six – never mind even going beyond that – the infrastructure isn’t there; the basics aren’t there, the basics aren’t out there on the pitch.
“The part of the piece that I wrote from the match was that we’ve talked so much about building, but you can only build from solid foundations, and Newcastle at the minute, certainly on the pitch defensively don’t have those solid foundations. It’s the same off the pitch – the training ground needs sorted, the academy needs sorted, the stadium needs sorted.
“Speaking to senior people in and around it over the course of the last week, there’s been so much when they’ve said, look, we knew the scale of the task before we came in, but until you actually get inside it, until you actually have the keys, you can’t actually comprehend the full scale of it, and so this really is a long-term project.”
TIF Thoughts on the task at hand for Newcastle’s owners…
Given how few games former owner Mike Ashley attended and how little money he put into the club, it should come as no surprise that the new custodians have been left with very little to work with as they look to build the club up.
Despite the lack of current infrastructure at Newcastle, it’s not held back their new owners from laying out their lofty plans for the club, with Staveley, who has a 10% stake in the club, claiming that they are aiming to win the Premier League within the next 10 years.
In other news: Insider drops interesting NUFC transfer claim, says 99-goal ace is ‘on their radar’ for January