Prior to Dan Burn’s arrival, the last time Newcastle United signed a centre-back was way back in August 2018, seeing Rafa Benitez sign Federico Fernandez from Swansea.
If that stat wasn’t bad enough, showing how long we’ve had to wait for defensive reinforcements, just wait until the next one.
Incredibly, a £13m deal for Burn was the first time we’ve spent more than £10m on a centre half since Fabricio Coloccini signed in 2008.
In fact, prior to Dan Burn’s arrival from Brighton, we’ve only spent over £6m on a centre-back THREE times since Colo swapped Deportivo for Tyneside 14 years ago:
- Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa – £7.2m (January, 2013)
- Chancel Mbemba – £8m (July, 2015)
- Florian Lejeune – £8.7m (July, 2017)
Not only does this show the level of neglect for a key position during the Mike Ashley era, it shows how stale our centre-back options had become.
With Fernandez, Schar, Dummett and Clark nearing the end of their contracts at the club and all either approaching or in their 30’s, it’s no surprise to see that the new owners were attempting to broker big money deals for Sven Botman and Diego Carlos last month.
Burn aside, the last time we paid over £10m for a centre-back was when Jonathan Woodgate signed in January 2003. At the time, boyhood fan Dan Burn was a 10-year-old lad on the books at NUFC’s Academy!
With sizeable funds and plenty of ambition now in place, we can finally expect so see a few big money arrivals at centre-back this summer.
Thanks for the article, very good.
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