Alan Shearer blasts Newcastle United's summer recruitment after witnessing gulf in class against Man City
After a strong 20-minute spell on Saturday at the start of the game between Newcastle United and Manchester City, the game turned on its head and became something else entirely.
Newcastle looked up for it after the first whistle as they pushed and pressed to take a well-deserved lead, but then the wheels came off massively.
It wasn't an immediate shift in the balance, but Manchester City grew in confidence as the first half drew to a close, which gave them enough to come out for the second half all guns blazing.
Newcastle had one touch of the ball in the opening minute or two of the second half as Man City passed through the Magpies on their way to bagging an equaliser, and from then on, Newcastle barely had a touch until the full-time whistle.
Alan Shearer blasts Newcastle's recruitment as not good enough
Considering this Man City team could have been classed as their reserves, it showed a massive gulf in class between the two squads. Something that Alan Shearer was quick to note on The Rest Is Football podcast comes down to the difference in the levels of recruitment.
“[Omar] Marmoush, Savinho, [Antoine] Semenyo, I look at their recruitment and I look at Newcastle’s recruitment and there’s no doubt it’s hurt Newcastle what they did last summer - it has set them back.
“How they try and recover from that this summer is going to be huge for them but most of the players that they’ve bought haven’t worked, Malick Thiaw being the exception and Jacob Ramsey a little bit but that has hurt Newcastle without a doubt.
“He [Eddie Howe] persists in playing [Nick] Woltemade in midfield, and he’s not a midfielder; he can’t play in central midfield. But I also think he’ll look at it and think [Anthony] Elanga hasn’t done enough, Wissa, when he came on, didn’t do enough. It’s not just Woltemade, I don’t want to be seen as picking on anybody.
“But the recruitment has been poor in the summer.”
Newcastle have been window shopping in the right areas, but this year, we need to actually buy
We all know the main reasons behind this ... PSR and 115 breaches of it, and Man City having a free run at the market for so long, but Newcastle were linked with both Marmoush and Semenyo before they went to City. See also Rayan Cherk, Abdukodir Khusanov and James Trafford.
Newcastle are looking in the right places, clearly, but we just have no follow-through. We don't act fast enough, and that leaves players out there for City to scoop up, and once they get involved, we've got no chance.
We simply must be more proactive this summer, and hopefully, having a sporting director who wants to be here will actually help us in that regard. It's going to be a huge window for Ross Wilson, Eddie Howe and Newcastle United. There's no room for error this time after wasting £250 million last year.
