Sky Sports journalist Pete Graves recently revealed Newcastle United’s summer transfer strategy and believes they will not go for the likes of Neymar, but instead build up with £30m, £40m players.
Since the Public Investment Fund took over the Magpies, there has been a lot of speculation over potential signings with huge players like Neymar and Kylian Mbappe linked to a move to the Premier League club.
However, despite these links, Graves believes Newcastle’s transfer policy will see the club look for players around the £40m mark, rather than splashing out on bigger transfers and wages as it could disturb the good feeling around the current squad.
He said: “I don’t think we’re going to sign players at £60-70m in this window. I see us right now at £30-40m is where we’ll go for a player that they really want, and around £100k wages. You can forget your Neymars; you can forget Jesse Lingard to a certain extent.
“Anyone whose wages are going to totally topple the wage structure… what it does is it causes the whole of this fantastic group to then get frustrated. I think they’re going to look to players who fit into what we’ve got at this moment and they’ll build. They want parity with wages, and they’ll want to spend that much on transfer fees – they would never spend £75m on Nicolas Pepe.”
TIF Thoughts on Graves’ comments…
It is a smart move for Newcastle to be looking to sign cheaper, quality players at this stage in their progression under PIF. While they could compete for more expensive players like Raphinha and maybe Neymar, the squad looked far better at the back end of the season and adding any frustration with expensive players could affect it badly.
So far they have done this by bringing in Matt Targett for £15m from Aston Villa, Nick Pope from Burnley for £10m, and most recently Sven Botman for around £35m. If they were to then go on and sign a Raphinha for £60m, it could upset the apple cart with the huge wages that will also demand.
Should Newcastle break their transfer policy?Yes
No
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