Decision to make on young star?
PROMOTION GAMBLE WENT HORRIBLY WRONG
NEWCASTLE United could still have to fend off some serious interest for Freddie Woodman before deadline day.
The England Under-20 goalkeeper is eager to be loaned out to League One this season in order to gain first-team experience but it is understood some Premier League clubs are looking at the bigger picture surrounding the Croydonborn stopper.
The Sunday Sun understands both Everton and Crystal Palace are two of the top-flight clubs interested in a possible permanent deal for the United stopper.
Woodman is no stranger to being linked with big clubs – Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur have previously scouted the youngster.
AMID the frustrations of Newcastle United’s vexing summer window, the serious financial gamble the club took following relegation last summer can be easily cast aside as immaterial.
Yet the Magpies continued to operate on a Premier League budget, even though they were no longer beneficiaries of the top flight’s lucrative TV deal.
Promotion simply had to happen and, with Rafa Benitez reconfirmed as their manager, it was a calculated risk from managing director Lee Charnley – and one that paid off handsomely.
But the same cannot be said of Aston Villa.
Like the Magpies, the Villans speculated in the hope of accumulating following relegation – but owner Tony Xia’s flutter has not now paid dividends.
Hiring Roberto di Matteo, a Champions League-winning manager but someone who did not have a history of rebuilding clubs, was a strange move.
By the time Steve Bruce was parachuted in to perform an attempted rescue mission, Villa had already been cut hopelessly adrift in the fight for the play-off positions, never mind the automatic promotion spots.
Over the course of the campaign, Villa paid out more than £70m in transfer fees, yet recouped just £40m.
Benitez may have spent an eye-watering £55m on incomings, but he ended the summer with a £30m net profit after bringing in £85m worth of player sales. Newcastle’s outlay delivered the Championship title and an immediate Premier League return; all Villa’s return brought was another season in the second-tier wilderness and further pitfalls down the line, too. Xia confirmed at the end of last season that Villa would be forced to spend conservatively over the next couple of seasons due to concerns over Financial Fair Play. As a result, Bruce’s budget has been in the single-million figures. John Terry may have arrived on big wages as a marquee signing, but an outlay of just £2.5m on transfer fees paints a picture of the financial restraints Villa are operating under. When you compare Bruce’s summer business to Garry Monk’s at Middlesbrough – the Teessiders have used their top-flight cash from last term to lavish £42m on new players, with two or three more expected to follow – it highlights the hazardous position Villa find themselves in. Terry stated earlier this week that Villa have to be targeting the Championship title this term, but the second tier is a division which gets ever-more competitive season upon season. EFL rules on FFP mean the Second City club are able to lose up to £83m across three seasons without being penalised, according to our sister publication the Birmingham Mail. Yet Villa’s latest accounts already show a deficit of £81.3m, suggesting Xia has little wiggle room as far as offering funds are concerned. When Xia first bought Villa, he spoke of Champions League football within five years, yet he is now being forced to comprehend an extended stay in the purgatory of the Championship.
But the current reality could not be any more different for them.
“I didn’t think I would be having to deal with it as such,” Bruce admitted this week as he was asked about the restrictions FFP had put on his summer business.
“But that’s the way it is. It is not a problem to me. I wouldn’t say I am enjoying it because it would have been nice to not have the restriction.
“That’s what’s come our way. Looking from afar, it’s spiralled out of control in a few years.
“We spent an awful lot of money last summer and an awful lot of money the summer before.
“We can’t keep haemorrhaging more and more money. Obviously, the way FFP is – it is a complicated beast.”
Instead, Newcastle are a Premier League outfit once more – yet the financial ramifications of relegation in 2016 are still impacting heavily on United’s transfer budget.
Benitez has been forced to seek out bargains and loan deals this summer, given the fact Newcastle missed out on the first year of the Premier League’s most-lucrative TV rights deal.
It will take this season and well beyond for the Magpies to stabilise financially, but at least they have the opportunity to re-establish themselves as a top-flight side and rebuild accordingly.
Villa are a prime example of what Newcastle could have been – and what the Boro could become, if Steve Gibson’s wager on securing immediate promotion does not pay off.
Without Benitez carefully plotting the Magpies’ path, they could have been a basket case of a club, too.