Newcastle United have failed to bring in any new players for the second January transfer window in succession, other than a couple of youngsters who are miles away from being first-team ready.
January is an awkward transfer window to navigate, in fairness, and not bringing in players probably wouldn't have been much of an issue to fans had we had a decent summer window, but that was seen as a catastrophe too.
Tensions are high amongst the Newcastle United fanbase right now after two hellish home games in a row going into the most important home game of the season against a side that just rediscovered their goalscoring form.
If Arsenal overturn that two-goal deficit on Wednesday night, you can already imagine what the reaction will be like online.
It's not helping matters when Eddie Howe comes out in his press conference and says that selling a player wasn't his idea. We're not saying it was a bad move letting Lloyd Kelly go, by any means, but now Howe has to manage a paper-thin squad for the rest of the season in which we are still competing on three fronts.
Howe told reporters (via The Chronicle) that he understood the reasons for allowing Lloyd Kelly to leave and it was all about managing PSR.
"Yeah, I don't think it was necessary my decision to let him leave. I think it's very reluctant from our side because he's a player that had just recently signed and we believed in him and his qualities. It was slightly frustrating for him that he hasn't played more. In part really due to the form of the other players around him.
"But I think we're in the world, and we have in this window, of trying to manage PSR. I'm trying to make decisions that benefit us in the long term, and this is one of those decisions. So Lloyd leaves with our best wishes.
"He's certainly shown exemplary attitude in this time here and I'm sure he'll do well in Italy, and it's an exciting new challenge for him."
Those three letters - PSR - are becoming a real rage trigger for me lately. It's not the case at all, but it does feel like Newcastle United are the only club taking PSR seriously. Manchester City are facing 115 charges related to breaching PSR and yet they've just spent £180 million in January, meanwhile, we are selling players we only signed in the summer.
It's hard not to be frustrated by all of this as a Newcastle fan because we all know that money is not a problem at all for our owners, and we couldn't spend our way into trouble if we tried.
The summer has to be massive for Newcastle just in terms of bringing in bodies. We're going to need four or five fresh faces in just to balance the squad out again and the more players we need, the lower the quality of those we can bring in will be, thanks to PSR. If that wasn't an issue, every player we brought in could be at least Bruno Guimaraes levels of quality, but we're probably going to have to bring in one Bruno-esque signing, and four Dan Burn-type players and hope that they all end up being as surprisingly good as he turned out to be.
PL | GD | PTS | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
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23 | 35 | 56 |
2 |
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24 | 27 | 50 |
3 |
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24 | 13 | 47 |
4 |
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24 | 16 | 43 |
5 |
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24 | 13 | 41 |
6 |
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24 | 13 | 41 |
7 |
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24 | 13 | 40 |
8 |
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24 | -3 | 37 |
9 |
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24 | 4 | 36 |
10 |
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24 | -3 | 34 |
11 |
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24 | 0 | 31 |
12 |
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24 | -2 | 30 |
13 |
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24 | -6 | 29 |
14 |
![]() |
24 | 11 | 27 |
15 |
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24 | -17 | 27 |
16 |
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23 | -5 | 26 |
17 |
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24 | -18 | 19 |
18 |
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24 | -28 | 17 |
19 |
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24 | -27 | 16 |
20 |
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24 | -36 | 9 |