‘We know the Big Six are worried about us, which is a good place to be’ i is granted exclusive access to Newcastle’s academy, where investment and smart ideas are beginning to pay off. By Mark Douglas

At the bottom of pitch three at Newcastle United’s academy in leafy Little Benton, there is a walkway that leads to an unremarkable gate. It does not look much but a short walk through it takes you to the adjoining first-team training ground. And so, for the 160 young footballers on Newcastle’s books, that gate is loaded with symbolism.

Every week or so, Eddie Howe or one of his coaches will ring Ben Dawson, his counterpart at the under-21 team, and ask him to send a few players through the gate. Sometimes they want to take a closer look at a player of promise but mostly it’s a case of bolstering numbers for first-team training.

One of those players was Lewis Miley, the 17-year-old then in the first year of his scholarship. He grabbed the chance and within a few months Miley was the standout performer in a Champions League game at Paris Saint-Germain. That walk can be life-changing.

“To get through that gate, that is the ultimate aim,” Steve Harper, Newcastle’s academy director, tells i. “But when we induct the younger ones we don’t say to them ‘That’s what it’s all about’ because we know most of them, statistically speaking, won’t make it through that gate and we don’t want them to leave bitter and twisted for not having become first-team players.

“We want them to leave feeling better for the experience, having enjoyed it, having been taught the right values and behaviours, knowing all about respect, the right things to eat, and having the resilience to cope with what the outside world will bring.”

For Harper, that is no throwaway statement. He wants to develop brilliant players but even better people. Earlier in the tour, I’d been greeted at the front door which is overlooked by a painted message that reads in black and white: “Today is your opportunity”. When you leave the building a sign asks pointedly: “Did you make the most of today?”

In some ways it is a good week to visit. The first team’s lingering hopes of ending the club’s 69-year wait for domestic silverware were extinguished in a sobering FA Cup defeat to Manchester City, and after the autumn glamour of the Champions League a draining campaign has increasingly played out against a backdrop of festering frustration.

No one doubts the stated intention of the ownership group to compete for trophies, but the size of the task in front of them to catch up to the Premier League’s heavyweights – a challenge exacerbated by suffocating profit and sustainability rules (PSR) – has prompted the first tentative questions about approach. A