Last Thursday, Newcastle announced the signing of Alexander Isak from Real Sociedad for €70 million. His arrival reassures the Newcastle fans that their Saudi owners hadn’t forgotten they recently bought a Premier League club. The signings of Nick Pope, Sven Botman and Matt Targett had been concluded earlier in the summer, and in the lull that followed it had started to look as though Newcastle were a long way behind LIV Golf on the priorities list of the Saudi Public Investment Fund.
Maybe this isn’t too surprising when you look at the relative profiles of the two projects. Sure, buying Newcastle gives the Saudis a team playing in their national colours in the world’s most widely-televised sports league, but LIV’s appeal is more precisely targeted to elite circles.
At the LIV-Invitational Bedminster last month, Newcastle’s chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan played a round of golf with (former and possibly future) US president Donald Trump. If he goes to a match at Newcastle and the cameras pick him out in the stand, the next celebrity they show is likely one of Ant or Dec. Maybe one day the great and good will flock north to the directors’ box at St James’ Park, but for now it seems a little less glamorous to own Newcastle than it would have been to own Chelsea, for example.
Eddie Howe’s two options at centre-forward had been Chris Wood, a slow target man, and Callum Wilson, a fast finisher. Isak is more of an all-rounder, combining some of the qualities of Wilson and Wood, and he should give Howe a skilful attacking focal point for his 4-3-3 system.
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On the evidence of Newcastle’s performance at Wolves, Isak is badly needed. Wolves’ Rúben Neves issued a scathing review: “Their style of play is like that, just long balls and second balls. They’re not a team that wants to have possession too much.” The half-chances manufactured by Howe’s pinball tactics were blocked or headed away by Nathan Collins and Max Kilman. Newcastle needed a couple of big refereeing decisions to keep them alive before the stunning 90th-minute equaliser by Allan Saint-Maximin, who volleyed a clearance straight back into the net from 20 yards.
Howe’s conservative style had worked well against Manchester City, with Saint-Maximin’s bursts into City’s lightly defended half frequently leaving Pep Guardiola with his head in his hands. Against opponents who played with more men behind the ball and without Bruno Guimarães to make it flow in midfield, Newcastle looked less impressive. Is this what Howe imagines is the football of the future?
“Eddie Howe is doing a great job” became instant conventional wisdom over the second half of last season, as Newcastle rose from 19th to 11th place with only a £90 million January transfer injection to help them on their way.
None of the teams below 11th could count on such reinforcements, and of course a more accurate way to characterise Newcastle’s rise is “the Saudi PIF is doing a great job”. Even though their transfer market activity this summer has been restrained relative to expectations, Newcastle are comfortably the world’s biggest-spending club in 2022, with net spending since January 1st of £212 million. Manchester United — if their planned €100 million deal for Antony goes through — are the only other team in the world to break the £200 million barrier.
In the circumstances, six points from the first four games of the new season seems no better than par for Howe. If that judgment seems unduly harsh, Howe should get used to it: he’s at the wrong club to be motivated by credit. Playing for a state-owned club is good for the salary and maybe the medal collection; the trade-off is that people don’t take your achievements very seriously, tending to see your success as the outcome of the club’s brute financial power rather than the excellence of the players and coaches.
See for example a recent interview by Bernardo Silva, the brilliant Portugal midfielder who has asked to leave Manchester City in each of the last three summers, but is still there because nobody can afford to get him out. “I’m not complaining here, but I feel like other clubs get a lot more credit than Man City for doing less,” he told ESPN. “For example, when I was at Benfica — a huge club in Portugal with more fans, more everything — you do something nice, and they make it look like it’s great. Here at Man City, you do something great and they make it look like it’s just good.”
What counts isn’t the medals, the Ballon d’Or, the Bola de Prata. It isn’t even the Champions League. What’s important is the money. The money that you make
“Again, I’m not complaining, but... checking the Premier League team of the year every year and knowing that we’re never the team that has the most players. We don’t have the best manager, we don’t have the best players, but we still win four Premier Leagues in five years? It just doesn’t make sense. It probably shows that Man City players don’t get as much credit as they should.”
In reality City had the most players in the PFA Team of the Year in 2018, 2019 and 2021; the only time they won the league and didn’t have the most Team of the Year players was last season — when Liverpool finished one point behind them while winning both cups and reaching the Champions League final. But though the grievances may be imaginary, the irritation seems real enough.
Bernardo can console himself with the wisdom of his compatriot Paulo Futre, the 1980s and 1990s winger who stars in the new Netflix documentary about the transfer of Luís Figo from Barcelona to Real Madrid. “I’ll never forget the conversation I had with Luís,” Futre reveals. “I told him, ‘I’ve been retired for 18 months. The Portuguese Federation still haven’t invited me to a game. Not even a friendly. Nothing. Why am I telling you this? Because at the end of the day, what counts isn’t the medals, the Ballon d’Or, the Bola de Prata. It isn’t even the Champions League. What’s important is the money. The money that you make.’”
Futre’s argument here is self-serving — he’s trying to persuade Figo to make the move, in which case he, Futre, pockets a €1.5 million commission — but you can imagine many players share his view. Figo was persuaded, but he was to discover the limits of this worldview.
Who emerges as the winner from the Figo affair? It’s not Figo. It’s not even his agent José Veiga, whose commission is even bigger than Futre’s. The clear winner is Florentino Pérez, who uses everyone else’s fixation with money to control them and launch his own era of personal domination of the Spanish game. In the end they’re all just pawns on his chessboard.
So Figo learned what Bernardo is learning and Howe, Isak and everyone else at Newcastle will learn in time: when you play for a money club, the guy who brings the money gets the credit.
