Is £35m worth £35m?

No, I'm not talking about inflation or poor exchange rates. Instead, I'm referring to the fact that Andy Carroll's departure to Liverpool was widely publicised to the extent where almost every club, player and agent knows we are now sitting on a hefty chunk of cash.

Forget all the talk in relation to how much we will spend this summer, for all we know it could be anything from £0 to £35m+. Knowing Mike Ashley (or on the other hand, not knowing him), we could end up selling our key players and adding more money to the bank, rather than adding players to the squad.

What's important is that we all know we need to bring in players this summer. An area of major concern is our strikeforce and to a lesser extent our defence. So our first priority should be for us to bring in players that fit these positions, but also players that fit a certain criteria.

First of all, if we want to move forward as a club then we need to bring in players who are good. When I say good, I mean around 7 or more on a scale of 1-10 (1 being Carlton Cole, 9.99 being Cheik Tiote). As well as this criteria, any potential signings will need to fit within an age bracket of around 20-25, will need to fit in with our club's wage structure and most importantly will need to be considered as value for money and a good investment (e.g. potential re-sale, Tiote being a prime example).

Now, this is an area that I'm somewhat concerned about. As I previously stated, clubs across Europe (and perhaps beyond) will be aware that we're sitting on a hefty chunk of cash, cash made from the sale of England's most expensive footballer ever. It is a well known fact that we have money to play with (if Mike plays ball). But what impact does this common knowledge bare upon our club this summer?

If we can cast ourselves back to 31st January, an initial bid of £8m was made for a Mr Charles N'Zogbia. After Wigan turned down the offer, we reportedly made an improved bid of £12m for him. "So what?", "That happens all the time", "What's your point?" are all things you might be thinking right now. But perhaps this 50% increase in our bid is a tell-tale sign, an indicator that we're going to struggle to sign players of a similar caliber to Ben Arfa and Cheik Tiote, at least not for tuppence.

I'll again ask you to cast yourselves back to last summer's transfer window. For weeks and weeks, we endured rumors that Ben Arfa was coming to Newcastle. A major stumbling block in that transfer was a certain Mr Jean-Claude Dassier. It was understood that Dassier wanted a fee for Arfa and Newcastle were not prepared to meet it. Eventually (after a lot of haggling and the saga of Arfa flying to England) we managed to pull off a loan deal for the lad, a deal which was very good value for money. But, do you think that under our current circumstances (with £35m in the bank), we would have been able to pull off the same deal? Personally, I think not.

I strongly believe in Graham Carr and our scouting network, but I think we will struggle to bring in the players we need whilst also getting value for money. Increased competition, wage demands, age/quality criteria and transfer fee demands will cause our current list of targets to decrease dramatically in size. In fact, I believe that these factors will hinder our chances of signing little gems like Tiote.

I believe that £35m from the sale of any asset is worth less than £35m from Mike Ashley's pocket or the revenue generated by our club. Graham Carr may well find gems like Tiote, but we will be expected to pay more for these sorts of players than we were expected to before selling Judas.

I'm not arguing at all that £35m is a hindrance, but I'm being realistic. I think that the knowledge of our potential transfer kitty could be a real influence in how much we spend on signing players. I just hope that this factor will still allow us to bring in the players we need for the right price. Here's hoping that Graham Carr can find us some top quality young players, players that we wont have to pay through the roof for.

Here's to a successful next season!

Howay the lads

 

maybe thats why pardew has been playing it down in recent weeks so other clubs don't think there is as much money.

 

Nolan and Barton whilst speaking at the Sportsman dinner last night said they expect heavy investment in the squad this summer, will post an article about what they said when I get home from work

 

It'll be interesting to read your post mate. I think we all expect heavy investment, but whether their expectations are built upon empty promises is something we don't know.

 

Aye I think we will be looking at 3-4 players but with the view to spend big on one player and the rest bargains.

 

If that's the case, then I hope the big player is a striker... NOT Carlton Cole.

 

Better not be him

 

Yeah you have made a good point. Getting value for money is going to be more difficult this summer. But cash is still cash, if we stick to our assessment of the price there is no reason why we should have to pay over the odds. After all you can always counter with the "yes we have £35m to spend, now do you want £6m of it or shall we spend it somewhere else?" argument.

Its not like we are Man City or Chelsea who are known to be willing to spend well above the market price for a player. I think Pardew should be able to get value for money if he has his wits about him.

 

Erm difficult one really
We should have organised one big signing for January before the Carroll deal was sorted aka 7 mil on a good striker. At the moment we are seen as desperate for a striker so clubs can hold out for stupid money!
I think that we will not sign any players from England with the exception of a loan move for Ireland as we will be priced out of the market.
I think the way we will go about it is to get players to put pressure onto there teams if they want to join us. I think this is more likely to happen in Holland and France
I think we have probably already sorted out two deals one of which I believe is Larsson on a free.
In conclusion I think the biggest problem we will have is to attract a striker for good money because other clubs know that we are desperate for a striker!
We all now agree that Carrol was overpriced at 35 mil however we will not get a better striker for this value!

 

Good article - we had the problem under FFS when he used to throw cash at players - everyone knew they could get a good price from Newcastle...

I do think Ashley is more shrewd that FFS and we'll get a couple of gems, but I still recon we'll end up over paying for one or two and one or two will be duds - thats football!

 

That N'Zogbia bid was a pure panic bid, and was rejected as there wouldn't have been enough time for them to replace him.

 

I think thats a little bit Naive as I think they knew probably a couple of days before if Torres wanted to go Carrol was a replacement!
I know we tried to price them out but I think we should have been having a few chats before he went!

 

This.

 

dont you know the £35mil was lost at the casino months ago hahaha

 

I'm sure it was spent paying agents bramble and Bruce
Fantastic investment in my eyes

 

Bramble is fantastic and bruce is even better

 

I still wish I knew which song Bruce was going to play!

 

ive pmed you the song keep it quiet

 

Nothing compared to you?
Christ that would have blown his cover

 

Good article - I don't think we'll be getting ripped off or held to ransom as much as Man City, Liverpool and Spurs (who everyone knows want to spend big in summer) but we may have to pay a million or two more. It's pretty common knowledge that Ashley will want to invest the bare minimum and clubs will know that if they ask for silly money then Ashley won't sanction the move.