Newcastle slump shows Spurs that finishing in top four isn’t a golden ticket
ANGE POSTECOGLOU has not mentioned Newcastle by name, but the Tottenham head coach has repeatedly used tomorrow’s opponents as an example of why he will never target a top-four finish.
“I keep saying it, I look at the teams who made the Champions League this year and that wasn’t the catalyst for them kicking on,” Postecoglou explained this month.
For Postecoglou, Newcastle and Manchester United demonstrate that progress is not always linear and finishing in the top four is not a “golden ticket” to reaching another level.
Newcastle go into tomorrow’s lunchtime kick-off 13 points behind Postecoglou’s side after failing to build on last season’s fourth-placed finish, and the Magpies are a timely reminder to Spurs that elite European football will stretch a thin squad to the limit.
Spurs, though, should be in a healthy position to strengthen in the summer transfer window and, medium-term, there is good reason to think they can avoid the kind of drop-off suffered by Eddie Howe’s side.
When the Saudi-backed Public Investment Fund (PIF) completed its takeover of Newcastle in 2021, it was easy to wonder if Spurs would be among the biggest losers from another state-backed project in the Premier League.
Newcastle’s rapid progress under Howe suggested those concerns were justified, but today the picture is very different, largely due to strict spending rules.
Premier League clubs yesterday agreed to introduce new financial controls for the 2025-26 season that will limit the percentage of revenue they can spend on wages and fees, replacing the current profit and sustainability rules (PSR).
The ‘squad cost controls’, voted through unanimously by all 20 clubs, will set a 70 per cent limit on how much annual revenue can be spent on player costs — including transfer fees and wages — for clubs in Europe, and an 85 per cent limit for clubs not in UEFA competitions.
It is too early to predict the full impact of the changes, with further details still to be ironed out before the Premier League’s AGM in June, but the likely upshot is that Spurs, who posted revenue of £549.6million last year, should continue to be in a strong position to keep spending.
Newcastle, whose own revenue for last season was less than half of Tottenham’s, at £250.3m, will be in an altogether stickier bind, despite their Saudi cash.
“Five of the ‘Super League Six’ can spend a lot more money, along with financial teacher’s pet Brighton,” wrote financial expert Kieran Maguire on X, when assessing the possible impact of the new rules.
“Aspirational and ambitious clubs such as Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Newcastle, who want to spend more money, will not be able to do so and instead need to cut.”
Spurs have already demonstrated their spending power and allure at Newcastle’s expense by beating them to the £50m signing of James Maddison (below) last summer, and going forward they should continue to be the bigger player in the market, particularly if chairman Daniel Levy can find the minority shareholder he is seeking.
So, this is the backdrop to Spurs’s first visit to St James’ Park since their humiliating 6-1 defeat under interim boss Cristian Stellini a year ago. It is a measure of how quickly Postecoglou has transformed the club that the result now seems like a distant memory — and a Spurs win could see them take hold of the race for fourth this weekend, with Villa visiting Arsenal on Sunday.
He may not care about the top four, but defeats for Liverpool and West Ham in Europe last night have reduced the chance of the Premier League being awarded a fifth Champions League place, increasing the jeopardy in Spurs’s head-to-head
with Villa.