Do we need to sell a star to thrive?

The likliest lad, in my view
Much is being made of our recruitment drive this close season as we prepare for some adventures in Europe next term.

And with the success of our transfer dealings over the last few years you can bet that us NUFC fans won’t be the only ones watching it either!

What we have now is some fantastic players that occupy maybe eight or nine starting places within the team, backed up by some able deputies and players who, for want of a better phrase have “done a job” along with a few players who just haven’t really done a lot a lot. Deadwood they are called.

To improve further we need to make the squad as strong as it can be, although it has been made certain that we will be doing any restructuring from within our own means which makes it pointless speculating about any number of names the clueless press will have us linked with. Eden Hazard, seriously?! The prime example of what I’m taking about!

Anyway to get back on point, we need strengthening, especially given the fact that we will have extra games next season and will hopefully be looking to progress a bit further in all of the cup competitions. That means that we need more quality in depth rather than numbers, so how do we finance that?

Now at this point people will say that Mike Ashley should be willing to spend a bit of his own money. Fair enough, but it’s not going to happen, not for a whole transfer window anyway but if you want to believe that then crack on. La la…

Instead let’s try looking at the realms of reality and what we know has happened before, and will probably be happening again this summer. We know what the deal is with players,and we know that any one of them will be sold if the offer is of a scale that makes saying no go against what the club is striving to achieve. Players will go, but it will be on our terms and not those of the buying club, unless it’s Demba Ba.

So really the question I’m asking is, would you forfeit one of our stars if it meant another round of squad strengthening? In much the same way Andy Carroll’s money was spent on improving contracts to retain players and bringing other players in, would you be against that happening again?

I understand that we finshed fifth last season, but it doesn’t mean that we should sit back and think we’ve cracked it, nor does it mean that every player we have is the best that we can realistically get. I do think some of the criticism levelled at times last season was completely over the top and just plain stupid – like not having enough possession. I mean come on… It doesn’t mean we can’t improve though.

I see a squad with gaping holes in it that need filling. We need our defence beefing up, we’ll need extra options in the middle of the park and we’ll need more backup strikers with Peter Lovenkrands going and rumours over the future of Leon Best persisting. That will leave us with the two Demba’s, Shola and Nile Ranger as a front four. Exactly…

The money to buy these players has to come from somewhere, so would you be willing to sell one for sake of the team?

About toonsy

A lifelong Newcastle fan and current webmaster of this very 'blog who has the sole aim of creating a place by Newcastle United fans, for Newcastle United fans.

60 thoughts on “Do we need to sell a star to thrive?

  1. Good article, be interesting to see how fans react if we do sell someone agaib for Carrol-esq money. Will the fans give the club time to get in the replacements? Or will there be more u roar?

    I think we will sell , and we will sell before we buy. I think every player has their price ( like most clubs ) but I belive we have a player lined up for every position. I think the club have earned the right to wheel n deal without been critised to a huge extent.

    I know people will argue that we need to build on what we have , but I think we have the financial power to do that at the moment. We need to continue to box clever and gradually build over a few seasons for continued success.

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  2. Why do we need to sell first when we have made over £30 mill profit last year.
    Has Alan Pardue,Derek LLambias and most Mags forgot this because i have never seen anyone question it.

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  3. Jarramag how do we have 30£ million? We made a loss of £4million before trading players of last year. I havent done the math this morning and Im too tired to even look but Im sure the players we sold less the players we bought doesnt leave £30 million. I would imagine there should be some left over from last season player trades but not enough for us not to need to sell before we can buy.

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  4. Jarramag
    May 23, 2012 at 08:51

    “Why do we need to sell first when we have made over £30 mill profit last year.”

    A profit on paper, not an actual profit….

    Plus those figures are from 2010/2011,not last season. A lot of that would have been used bringing in players like Cabaye, Cisse,Ba,Santon etc etc

    That’s the problem with accounts, they are always delayed so everyone ends up comparing the wrong circumstances to the wrong accounts.

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  5. aye we get nowt for BA,so for me its tiote or krul imo,guthrie,loverman,ranger,simpson will go i also think this deal with celtic is dragging on because hes waiting on what is going to happen with krul imo if hes signs for celtic it will be tiote,well from the outside thats the way it looks to me

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  6. Ice I casnt see us selling Krul , he just signed a long term contract. For me I think it will be Tiote. Now I hope Im wrong but the club have been succesful in selling a player and improving the seaom with 2 or 3 players from it so I cant see why they wont do it again. I just have faith it will work out again 🙂

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  7. I would certainly like to keep the group together, but given that Mike Ashley won’t be splashing out £20-25m of his own money, I think that selling Ba and Tiote would free up so much money, that we could buy 5-6 players for various positions, that would certainly make the squad stronger than it is.

    If we are going to play 4-3-3 again next season, Ba wouldn’t be too big a miss, now that Cissé has pretty much made the CF role his own. If we were to play 4-4-2, it would be a whole other story. I think what it comes down to, is – do you want to play a system that suites Ba or Ben Arfa? Ben Arfa doesn’t fit the 4-4-2 and we surely could find players that are better suited for playing the LF role than Demba Ba.
    Tiote, fantastic as he is when on form, is a player that would command a massive fee. So eventhough I would like to keep him, he would be the one of our star players I would sell if needed. We will find another battler, and will also be able to buy a few other players for that money.

    In a season or two, when we (fingers crossed) have a 25 man squad full of quality, we will not be in need of buying 5-7 players each summer, meaning that we can limit our dealings to just optimizing minimally in various positions.

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  8. JT i agree with you if one has to go i would hope its tiote not krul,its just funny how this celtic deal is takeing so long,and you know yourself contracts are not worth the paper there written on

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  9. I think we’ll sell off the dead wood players for a few million here & there mainly just to get them off the wages bill, then we can look to bring in others to replace them… so tbh, I don’t think we’ll see many coming in through the door until after the EC, tho I would hope that if we do sell any of our big named stars, we don’t do a Carroll & leave it until the dying minutes of the transfer window, thus leaving us no time to buy a replacement, especially if its Ba or Tiote, tho I think we may have cover for both of them should it happen…

    I think if we do sell Tiote, it’ll be for around £20m, which will give us funds to buy a few new faces to cover our weak spots in the squad… tho I’d prefer to keep him & just get rid of the dead wood 🙁

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  10. Ice I wouldnt say it is us draggin out feet on Foster going to Celtic I would say its the other way around. Im sure they are worried about finance with all the trouble with Rangers and with Gordan been released by scumberland it changes things slightly.

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  11. Is Tiote really going to fetch £2Om though? I’m not convinced at all. probably £12-£15m is more realistic, thats if somebody REALLY wants him. i think if we are going to really push on this summer then we will need to speculate to accumulate a bit, meaning investing in the playing staff from our own coffers. At the end of the day we will have shaved a fair bit off our wage bill since last season….

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  12. Nice one Toonsy, another well balanced article.

    I think it is heavily dependent on just how much we want to progress. I kind of get the feeling that Ashley says right I’ll give £10m for transfers and any more comes from what you generate through sales of players – unless we get a crazy bid, then I think the board will have more of a say.
    I think you hit the nail on the head, players like Hazard and maybe Jan Vertonghen may well be out of our reach – or if they are not then they would limit how many others signings we could make this summer.
    If Ashley put 10m in, we could probably generate a further 10m with the sale of Forster, Guthrie and Simpson, maybe more with others.

    The reality is that we won’t spend the kind of money that Man Utd, City, Chelsea, Liverpool or Arsenal will spend. But we can certainly improve our squad without spending a fortune. Free transfers, good scouting and calculated risk taking seems to have worked for us so far, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

    The point is, we may not get a £20m plus bid for one of our stars, so we can’t depend on that form of revenue to improve our squad. We need to crack on and get in some good footballers who may not be household names now but who can be playing well for Newcastle.

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  13. I’m not sure we need to sell someone to fund this summer, as we don’t need any huge signings.
    Ba might go, but other than that I can’t see us signing much more than CB, a RB and a young striker. Tbh I don’t even think Ba will go.

    Surely getting rid of the deadwood and Simmo/Guthrie will fund the two necessary signings?

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  14. @Sharpy agree.
    I think that would be more than enough to fill the gaps in our team as well.

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  15. Personally see the only player leaving to be Ba with a more than adequate replacement i suspect.

    On tiote i really cant see him leaving for an english team? Other than maybe manu?

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  16. LST aye it could be a m/u tiote said in the past he didnt want to go to chelsea doesnt like london they say,but money talks mate

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  17. I don’t think Ashley would take as low as £12m for Tiote. Look at Chelsea signings from the past 18 months: Torres for £50m, Lukaku for £18m, Luiz for £21m, Meireles £12m. Ashley is going to look at those and think Chelsea are taking the **** with a £12m offer for Tiote.

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  18. looks like that young french kid is at the benton training ground today to sign up on three yr contract,thought it would be a longer one mesel

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  19. Ba can be sold , our next striker is Emile Heskey , just been release by Villa , what a player 😆

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  20. Tiotes stock has gone down since he burst onto the scene in England. Really dont see anybody paying £20m for him. Mereiles is a goalscoring holding midfielder who cost £12m. Why would anybody pay twice that for Tiote? you might. E right that Ashley wont accept bids in that region, which is a good thing for our squad – but I think that us fans assuming somebody will willingly come to us just to get mugged for one of our players, which will make us srtonger next season and even better competition for the clubs fighting for Europe around us – is verging on fantasy. carroll was a rare occurance, we cant expect that every summer.

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  21. “Why do we need to sell first when we have made over £30 mill profit last year.
    Has Alan Pardue,Derek LLambias and most Mags forgot this because i have never seen anyone question it.”

    In:
    Cabaye
    Demba Ba (free + 3mil signing on/agent fee)
    Marvaeux (free + 1mil signing on/agent fee)
    Abeid (free + 500k signing on/agent fee)
    Obertan (3.5mil)
    Santon (5mil)
    Rob Elliot (500k)
    Papiss Demba Cisse (9.5mil)

    Thats around 22mil that we spend last season

    Out:
    Nolan (4mil)
    Barton (free)
    Routeledge (2mil)
    Enrique (6.5mil)

    Thats around 12mil we received

    So we spend around 10mil overall…

    Yes, we sold Carroll for 30mil but we also spent on the training ground and stadium apparantly. So call it 10million we should have remaining.
    That 10mil should then go to paying Ashley off IMO.

    Then this season, I would expect one of our big names to go. And we would get around 25mil. I’d expect us to spend around 15mil of that and then Ashley would pocket the other 10mil.

    The soon we get the debt down the better for Ashley and the club.

    From this season we should also be running at a slight operating profit meaning that we can then use that to decrease debt too.

    Our main ambition should be to lose no more than one of our best players each season. Bring in two or three with great potential and use the remainder to pay off debt while remaining in the top eight each season.

    Once our debt is paid, we would be in the best situations of any club in the league.

    Its all a fine balance of course… But the last two seasons, its been so far so good.

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  22. SHAMROCK
    May 23, 2012 at 10:05
    “Is Tiote really going to fetch £2Om though? I’m not convinced at all. probably £12-£15m is more realistic”

    We’re in the driving seat mate, Tiote is probably worth around £10-£15m, but so was Andy Carroll, see my point?
    There’s no way the board would sell at £12m, we’ve witnessed at first hand what an arsehole our club has become when it comes to selling players, and long may it continue! We don’t need to sell, so if a club has identified Tiote and they want/need him, I reckon we’ll get around £20m, if not £25m!

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  23. We need to sell if we are going to buy, simple.
    Ashley has already said the club must stand on its own feet as a business, this is no different to Arsenal with Fabregas, Nasri and now RVP.

    Trick is to get top dollar for a player and then try to improve the squad with 1 player as good as one youve sold (albeit cheaper) and 1 good player who has room to improve

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  24. See the accountants are out again…. 🙄

    I’ve got understanding of nuclear physics so I don’t really pass comment on it, so i’ve got no idea why people mention a few ins and outs and say ‘where’s this money gone’ like it’s a true representation of the clubs finances.

    Plus, aren’t the last figures released like a year old, so players recently brought in won’t be included in that?

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  25. Ed Malyon @eaamalyon 22 year old freelance sports & betting writer:

    “Been suggested to me that Nathaniel Clyne may decide to go with Newcastle rather than MU now. Terms agreed with both. Needs to play.”

    From twatter… 🙄

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  26. Would anyone want doyle or fletcher from wolves?
    Canny buys potentially. O hara and jarvis are also fairly good squaddies

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  27. Players I think will pribably be going this season:

    Alan Smith: free(60k off the wage bill, thank God)
    Danny Guthrie: free (20k/week off the wage bill)
    Peter Lovenkrans: free (15k/week off the wage bill)
    Steve Harper: free (15k/week off the wage bill)
    Danny Simpson: 3mil (15k/week off the wage bill)
    Demba Ba: 7mil (40k/week off the wage bill)

    So that would be 10mil in and about 165k/week off the wage bill. Which should be enough to cover three quality incoming signings.
    Say Ashley did give us an original transfer kitty of around 10mil, that would be 20million pounds and 165k/week in wages to play with.

    Seems fair enough IF we bring in the right signings…

    Its all well and fun guess, but we’ll only really know come the start of the season.

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  28. Liam

    Not as anything more than back-up… I like Jarvis and think he could do a decent job but I think we are just a grade above that now.

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  29. JJ – you mean they are all british and therefore **** which is probably true! 😆

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  30. Harping back to that interview Pardew gave on BBC (Mick Lowes), he insisted that if we hadn’t made Europe, Ba would definitely be away this summer. What’s that all about? The guy has only played about 30 games FFS! If that’s the case then good riddance. We need much more commitment than that if we’re going to build a good team. What’s next? Cisse gone after 14 games? Boils the blood.
    My money’s on Ba leaving and us making nothing. We need someone much better to play left side of 433. On the other hand then an injury to Cisse and we’re screwed.

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  31. Stevep – I disagree, for 2 reasons, firstly that theory only works if you have players other teams want to buy. To use your example of Arsenal – so they sell RVP for around £30m, that may see them through this summer but who do they sell next summer?!. They have no £20m+ players left to sell. Also, their season ticket prices are the highest in the league having won nowt for a few years now so they can’t drive those up.
    Secondly, you have to invest to be successful and even Ashley will understand that. As I’ve said earlier, if he puts in £10m and we raise the rest through player sales, we could see a big improvement to our squad.
    The fact is, Ashley makes money off Newcastles success, so he would make that money back.

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  32. ILM
    “See the accountants are out again…. 🙄

    I’ve got understanding of nuclear physics so I don’t really pass comment on it, so i’ve got no idea why people mention a few ins and outs and say ‘where’s this money gone’ like it’s a true representation of the clubs finances.”

    I see that wankers are out again…. 🙄

    In no way do I suggest figures are accurate, and clearly mention that its pure speculation on my part and in no way a true representation of the club’s finances.
    I also clearly made a comment suggesting that the Carroll money has been reinvested in players like Cabaye, Cisse, Ba, Santon, etc and other things we arn’t aware of.
    I then went on to say I feel we do need to sell to buy because regardless of profits made in a single season, we are still in debt.
    Whether you pass comment on it or not doesn’t mean others can’t.
    It also doesn’t mean they see themselves as financial gurus – its all in the name of fun during a time of no football.
    It is a time for speculation…

    Also to say the club are now bullies in the transfer market is inaccurate. How can you make a statement like that based on one single transfer.

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  33. Liam @35
    Ye 😆

    I actually think they would have been good buys lasy season. But we’d have to pay around 5mil for them or more and for that price we got players like Tiote, Cabaye, Ben Arfa, Santon.
    It just isn’t worth buying local unless we have to.

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  34. JJ – I don’t think he meant you 😉

    Try looking @ 2 and I’ll bet you’ll be a bit closer 😉

    Mind you I may be wrong, but I vaguely remember ILM saying much the same as you’ve just said, that the money has been reinvested which is what I’m basing my assumption on 🙂

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  35. World-Football-Agent ‏@WorldFootballAg

    “Nathaniel Clyne has snubbed Manchester United in favour of a move to Newcastle.”

    twatter again… 🙄

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  36. According to twatter we are signing barnetta, amilfatano and clyne today 🙄 🙄 🙄

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  37. See villa have pretty much released the entire o’squeal transfer wishlist, Put money on Heskey, Guzan and cuellar ending up at the SOS… 😆

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  38. @Toonsy
    “So i’ve got no idea why people mention a few ins and outs and say ‘where’s this money gone’ like it’s a true representation of the clubs finances.”

    I was the only one to mention ins and outs, but he apparently neglected to read the rest of what I wrote because attacking me accounting credentials. 😉

    Its ok though… I know they are in no way accurate. Just wondering how much our financial predicament allows us to spend.
    Unfortunately even after a terrific season like we just had, we still arn’t in any position to spend big without selling.

    Lets hope our scouts do as well this season as they did the last two in finding bargains.

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  39. Liam

    Accoring to Wiki, in very badly worded English Barnetta is already at the Jesmond Hotel and signing up…

    But I’m the only one that will be signed at all of those three if not this week is Amilfatano.

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  40. LST – they would certainly improve the squad, but I think your probably right in questioning how reliable the source is like.

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  41. Fecking sheep, People like McGarry and motson on 5live, That bunch of cunts on soccer saturday and Lawro tip us to struggle then everyone takes it as gospal, When they are proved wrong they spend ages trying to sell our best players to everyone else…

    wankers

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  42. JJ…not sure Harper will be off the wage bill as he still has a year left, think in a recent interview he said he was looking to go on loan….but ya never know 😕

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  43. We have a need of players with different qualities. There are needs of more quality players, that can work in the different levels of first team competition. We need more youth players coming in from the reserves. Tavener, Ferguson, Inman, Street, Albeid, Moyo and more could all be given runs in the cups for experience, together with more experienced players, that would ensure us going through in both cups on the lower levels. It is all depending on the opponents that we are facing. With the Deadwood sold off we regain much room for salary which can be invested in players that would be needed next season like Mbiwa, Biolsen, Debuchy, Barnetta, Clyne, and De Jung. Yes there will be much more games, with a good cup run, we can count well over 50 games next season. This will give experience and be very useful of the development of the players in the Club. Especially the youth players that see their teammates go off to first team and have good performences. That will boost them too, as not being not too faar from their dream of playing for the Magpies. HWTL.. lets go get em….

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  44. @52 – Could be the best statement there. LOL.

    Haway man, stop deluding yourself.
    Your poor defence has just lost its best player, Enrique.
    Your reasonable midfield has lost its best TWO players, replacing them with bottom of the barrel
    French nobodies who nobody has heard of, and your “strikeforce” of Ameobi, Best and Ba, is laughable!
    Relegation a certainty hahaha!!

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