Newcastle United journalist Liam Kennedy has been discussing the state of St. James’ Park and any renovation plans the club might have.
Newcastle’s owners have certainly shown that they are willing to put money into the club when needed – best demonstrated by how much they put forward in the most recent transfer window in a bid to keep the club in the Premier League.
The next step for them when it comes to investing in the club might well be infrastructure, an area that – as these figures from football finance expert Kieran Maguire show – was terribly underfunded by the club’s previous owner, Mike Ashley.
But speaking on the latest edition of NUFC Matters, when discussing whether or not the owners might look to make changes to the ground, with particular reference to the Gallowgate End, Kennedy claimed that whilst the club might look to make improvements in that area of the club, he didn’t necessarily think it would be the most pressing issue at hand for the club’s owners.
He said: “I would suspect there’s a lot of other things that are a priority ahead of that. Look, I don’t think it’s going to be something that isn’t addressed in the next couple of years in terms of what they want to do and their plans, but I don’t foresee it being something that will change immediately. I think it’ll take some time.
“I think the training ground is actually a bigger priority, because [with] the levels and steps that they want to take over the next few years, they need to make sure that they’ve got the infrastructure behind the scenes to attract the type of players that take you to those levels, and Newcastle United don’t have that at the moment.”
TIF Thoughts on Liam Kennedy’s comments about St. James’ Park and Newcastle United’s priority…
Do Newcastle United need to leave St James' Park?
Yes
No
The training ground is something that club director Amanda Staveley has mentioned before as something that needs to be looked at, stating soon after the takeover was completed: “There’s no point having fantastic players if there’s nowhere suitable for them to train.”
And as Kennedy hints at, the key thing for Newcastle will be putting themselves in a position to be as attractive as possible to any big-name players that they want to bring into the club, and a training ground is likely going to have a bigger impact on a player wanting to sign for them than a few extra seats in the stadium.
So whilst Newcastle fans might want the club to make these changes, they should trust the owners to do things in the right order to make the club the best that it can be, and they will get around to the other business when the time is right.
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