What Now? - No European football for Newcastle United next season but will it matter?

Today saw confirmation that Newcastle United's return to the European stage was a brief one as the Magpies will not be playing in Europe next season.

Newcastle needed Manchester City to do the business over their bitter rivals at Wembley but were still clearly hungover form their Premier League title-winning celebrations as, for all their possession, they did absolutely nothing with it until it was too late.

Two quick, decisive counter-attacks from Manchester United was all it took to send the FA Cup to the red half of Manchester and drop Chelsea into the Europa Conference League and leave Newcastle with nothing.

It's not the end to the season we wanted, but probably the one that we deserved after simply not being good enough for large portions of the campaign - albeit due to some extenuating circumstances.

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Newcastle's transfer dealings may look different now

So the big question is ... does it even matter that much? Like everything, there are good and bad sides to not being in Europe next season, starting with the bad:

The club will miss out on those European paydays which are essential in the fight against Profit and Sustainability Rules. While the Champions League is where the big bucks are, even the Europa Conference League has some financial benefits to it which really could have come in handy.

Not having European football to offer may also hamper us in the transfer market. Not just because of the fact we'll not generate as much revenue next season so, therefore, need to be clever with our spending, but the types of players Newcastle want to bring in are the calibre of player who want to be playing in the top competitions.

There are positives if you want to find them

It's not all bad news, though - and not just because we won't see new deals handed to Paul Dummett and Matt Ritchie.

Partaking in European football this season was a big contributing factor to our massive injury crisis with a paper-thin squad pushed to its limits every week, so not having those extra games gives our lads more time to rest and recuperate. Fewer injuries can only be a good thing.

Also, with one less competition to focus on, we should be able to march on the Premier League with more gusto this season, as well as give the domestic cups another fair whack - surely we can't have the same rotten luck with the draws as we did this season two years in a row.

So it's not all doom and gloom, there are positives there if you want to look for them.

It still doesn't take the sting out of the fact that it was Manchester chuffing United who inflicted this wound on us though.