According to The Mail’s Craig Hope, the ‘early numbers’ coming back on Newcastle’s summer budget suggest it could be up to £150m plus player sales.
The North-East reporter accepts it’s tough to be told an ‘exact figure’ on our spending plans and rightfully so, but his sources state that £100-£150m plus cash raised from outgoings is the likely amount, as things stand.
As Hope highlights, the addition of quality and additional depth will be needed ahead of the 2023/24 season; where we’ll be looking to build on our top-four finish, do well in the domestic cups and compete in the UEFA Champions League.
A right-sided centre-back, left-back, at least one midfielder, a winger and versatile forward have all been mentioned as areas we’ll target, with Hope backing us to do some ‘serious business’, sign four to five and spend around the £150m mark in what promises to be an ‘exciting’ summer on Tyneside.
“They are going into a Champions League campaign now and they need better quality and better depth as well.
“What is the budget? It’s our job as journalists to try and find out the exact number. I don’t think we’ll ever get the exact figure, but at the moment sources are saying a spend of ‘at least £100m’ – the budget being somewhere between £100-£150m, which could be supplemented by player sales.”
“We might know more from people we speak to over the course of the next few days, but those are the early numbers that are coming back. But there’s an astrix next to all of this, because whatever we’ve been told about budget in the previous three windows….they’ve always gone on and spend a little bit more than that!
“I honestly think they’ll do some serious big business this summer and come the end you’ll be looking at something close to 4-5 players and £150m spent, with maybe one or two going on top of that. So, it certainly promises to be exciting.”
