cosmic

Some will be loans

Another game, another defeat, another day closer to January, which increasingly feels like a defining month for Newcastle United. Away from the pitch, where the team have now won just one of their first 17 league fixtures this season, preparations are winding up for the winter transfer window, with the club’s new owners hiring Nick Hammond, the former Celtic and Reading director of football, as a temporary consultant. Hammond will provide counsel and expertise ahead of one of the most important windows in Newcastle’s history. His task — to help the club secure, as a minimum, a centre-back, full-back and central midfielder who will immediately improve the first XI — appears as gargantuan as the one Eddie Howe, the head coach appointed last month, faces in keeping Newcastle in the Premier League. Wednesday’s 3-1 loss away to Liverpool leaves them 19th in the table, three points from safety and with a worse goal difference (minus-19) than any other side barring Norwich City, who are bottom. They have played two more games than Burnley, the side immediately above them, and one more than 17th-place Watford. Only West Bromwich Albion, in 2004-05, have won just one of their opening 17 fixtures and stayed up since the Premier League era began in 1992. Newcastle’s next two matches are against Manchester City, the league leaders and defending champions, and a Manchester United side going for a third league win in a row since replacing Ole Gunnar Solskjaer with Ralf Rangnick, so their predicament may become even more precarious before the mid-season trading period can offer the possibility of salvation. With Howe’s appointment bringing little tangible uplift in results, aside from the 1-0 victory over Burnley earlier this month, Newcastle are increasingly relying on their transfer business to lift them away from the bottom three. But that situation becomes more complicated when you take into account the lack of leadership structures in place at St James’ Park. Sources at Newcastle say that Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi, the husband-and-wife team who have the management contract to run the club, have been working “flat out”, pursuing potential new signings. They and fellow director Jamie Reuben have taken hands-on roles in planning and negotiations, in tandem with Howe and Steve Nickson, Newcastle’s chief scout, who have identified prospective targets. Lee Charnley, the former managing director, left last month and the hunt for a heavyweight chief executive is also taking time. The Athletic understands that Newcastle’s consortium, which is backed by the financial might of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), is wedded to implementing a sporting director model. Present in the directors’ box at Anfield, Staveley and Ghodoussi witnessed first hand the detailed executive set-up Liverpool have in place — something which, over time, they hope to emulate on Tyneside. But, while the board led the search for a new head coach following the post-takeover departure of Steve Bruce in October, and conducted the managerial interviews, a third-party recruitment firm, Nolan Partners, is handling the process to source a senior football official, and that will not be completed before January. Howe was asked before Newcastle’s 4-0 defeat at Leicester City on Sunday how much progress had been made in finding the right person. “That’s above me,” he said. “I’ll work with whoever the club chooses for that role, and I’ll be excited to do so. I think ultimately it’s something, a position, the club wants to fill and I embrace that.” Several candidates have already been spoken to, including Michael Emenalo, the ex-Chelsea director of football. It was reported recently that Emenalo had withdrawn from consideration, although Ghodoussi tweeted that the former Nigeria international was “never offered the job of sporting director or director of football”. In the meantime, Hammond will fill the breach, using his knowledge of the game and array of contacts to advise the board on recruitment. A goalkeeper for Swindon Town, among others, in his playing days, the 54-year-old has most recently been working for Scottish giants Celtic as head of football operations, a position he resigned from in March. Hammond also spent two years as West Bromwich Albion’s technical director, but is best known for his two decades at Reading, where he played a key role in the club’s rise to the Premier League for the first time in their history in 2006, handling player recruitment and contract negotiations. He was also responsible for appointing Steve Coppell, the manager who took them up. At Newcastle, his remit will be to guide Newcastle through a challenging month which could make or break their hopes of avoiding a third relegation to the Championship in the last 14 seasons. Defence is a particular concern — they are conceding a league-worst average of 2.2 goals per game — but Howe is also committed to a front-foot style which the current squad is ill-suited to. A ball-playing, athletic centre-back, a dynamic midfielder and a progressive full-back are among the priority positions that require strengthening. The “serious” hamstring injury Jamal Lewis suffered at Anfield, and the subsequent struggles of makeshift left-back Matt Ritchie, have only magnified the need for defensive reinforcements. Kieran Trippier, the Atletico Madrid and England right-back, is of interest, but luring quality players to join a Tyneside relegation battle will be far from straightforward. Ideally, an attacking midfielder and a striker would also arrive, but conducting such extensive surgery on a squad in January is rare and also notoriously difficult. Newcastle’s plight in the bottom three only exacerbates that, even if PIF’s financial resources may prove to be an invaluable inducement. At this stage, it is not thought that Hammond is in the running for the permanent sporting director role. Newcastle want a substantive figure who has the nous to influence all aspects of the football operation, from the first team, to the academy to the construction of a new training ground, with potential sites across the city and wider region being considered. “We need someone to build the club,” a senior source said. Over the next six weeks, however, Hammond could prove pivotal in determining whether whoever is eventually appointed as sporting director is able to build upon Premier League foundations, or whether their revamp begins in the Championship. Newcastle’s January recruitment drive really does feel that critical to their top-flight future.

Nice to see the circus has shifted to Everton; tent and all. With our new Owners, coaching team and fans once again united, we can enjoy the moment whilst the media have their field day mocking other clubs

Exclusive Q&A: Bundesliga analyst tells us exactly what to expect from Joelinton July 26, 2019 Olly Hawkins https://www.nufcblog.co.uk/2019/07/26/bundesliga-expert-tells-nufc-fans-exactly-what-to-expect-from-joelinton-in-must-read-qa/

He said in some interview it was nice to have backing of Chairman in transfers; alluding he had none from MA. Ironic that despite backing from new Chairman, its only moral and not financial backing. Surely he must have known about Everton's FFP before taking up the role

Much like an external Consultant, Rangnick can recommend all he wants. But for his recommendations to be implemented will require buy in from the wider group and the political will to see it through. Ferguson will still need to be convinced ...

Any updates on this?

All very quiet on the Howe front. Hopefully he has just mild Covid and still able to pass instructions to coaching team. The longer we wait without any message from him, I fear the worse that he is down with severe symptoms

Sounds like a very interesting choice of appointment. Just wondering how much of his experience managing a League will translate to managing a Club. Although I would imagine the pure football side of things will be helmed by DoF and/or Tech Director etc His role as special adviser to the A-League clubs and head of league started some 2 years ago so if he was in a contract, it will not be unreasonable time to break contract, if any. The more binding agreement may be "On his departure, the 59-year-old signed a comprehensive set of “non-compete clauses” that ensure he cannot join a rival organisation for three years." So is a Club in PL considered a rival organisation? https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/oct/16/former-premier-league-chief-richard-scudamore-to-assist-australian-football

Wonder if the presence of McParland and Brown is slowing down the process of getting in the DoF. With them having played key advisory roles during the takeover, their very presence in the new structure may cause confusion in roles and responsibilities with DoF. They would have been perfect as part of new organization if Rafa had been appointed Manager but without Rafa, their staying around will complicate matters

Could we be sponsored by the new second national carrier instead? No better advertistisment than being beamed out to football fans globally https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/6/30/saudi-arabia-plans-new-national-airline-in-move-away-from-oil Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced plans on Tuesday to launch a second national airline as part of a broader strategy to turn the kingdom into a global logistics hub as it seeks to diversify from oil. The creation of another flag carrier would catapult Saudi Arabia into the fifth rank globally in terms of air transit traffic, official state media reported, without giving details on when and how the airline would be created.

Just like Ashley not spending much on transfers leaving us in a strong FFP position; we could benefit from the lack of intensity during the Bruce holiday training period as our season just kind of started. Our lot will hopefully still be relatively fresh during the end of season run in whilst other teams may be burnt out by then.

At least we have the available funds to compete for better players instead of picking up loans, free transfers on final day of Transfer Window

https://news.sky.com/story/premier-league-chairman-hoffman-to-resign-amid-clubs-fury-over-newcastle-deal-12470160 Hoffman taking the blame instead of Masters

There must be many other things Saudi companies can sponsor if not every "investment" is looking for "max return". I'm sure the Consortium will be creative and get around these ridiculous newly imposed anti competition nonsense

How does this Fair Value thingy work? If we can't bring in one big sponsor eg Aramco for say 200M, can we break this down in to 20 smaller sponsors of 10M each? Total will be the same and surely if we can attract multiple sponsors, PL can't stop this...or can they?

Hopefully King Kev will be there as well !

There was some mention (can't remember where) of the Consortium wanting to have 2 Directors of Football; modelled after Brentford. I found an article that describes how Brentford is set up. Despite PIF's riches, from a business perspective, they will want this to be a self sustaining model in long run. https://offthepitch.com/a/we-went-working-seed-investor-late-stage-investor-brentford-success-so-much-more-just-excellent?ta=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJlbWFpbCI6InJpYW5hd2FuZ3NhQGdtYWlsLmNvbSIsImlhdCI6MTYzNjM2MDc3M30%3D.NTc0YjdlYTRkZDU4N2FmNTliYWJjYzAwNDkyZGQ4N2NjZmJkYWNlNmExOTk2ZDNlM2JkZTVkNTdhMzgwNWI2OA%3D%3D "We went from working as a seed investor to a late-stage investor" - the Brentford success is so much more than just excellent recruitment KASPER KRONENBERG [email protected] "People tend to look at us and tend to explain our relative success with our recruitment model. It is true that we have a good track record identifying undervalued players and selling them with a big profit, but that is just part of the story. I think our player development model is as important as recruitment. The young players we bring in are very rarely the finished developed package from day one, and we spend a lot of resources and money on developing those players once they enter the building.” Rasmus Ankersen, co-director of football at Brentford FC, is fully aware that the Brentford story being told all over Britain - and probably all over Europe - is a story about using data in a different way to recruit players. And, basically, he doesn't care how people explain the progress of the club - a club with one of the lowest revenues in the Championship - as long as the progress continues. But when asked to explain the strategy behind the progress - many observers would say that they are punching above their weight - he feels that all the people working with player development at the club, in particularly at the B-team, deserves some credit for their hard work. "The B-team is a vital component of our progress over the past few years. The way we organize ourselves in terms of player development is quite different to the traditional academy model.”The summer of 2016 saw Brentford taking a significant step towards finally generating some return on the £2 million investment they made every year in the academy. 95 per cent will never survive "Using investment language you could say that we went from working as a seed investor to a late-stage investor. From investing money in very unmatured talent, players as young as seven, to suddenly not recruiting anyone under the age of 17. If you are a seed investor, you know perfectly well that when you invest money in early stage start-ups, most likely 90 or 95 per cent of those companies will never survive. "And, basically, you can apply that way of thinking to young footballers when they become part of academies all over the country. The vast majority of them won’t play in your first team and therefore won’t generate a return on investment. The one or two players that get through the eye of the needle will need to pay for investment you’ve made in everyone else," he explains. According to Ankersen, Brentford were in a difficult position because, even though their academy did a decent job in developing players, quite often the most valuable players - or assets - left the club when they turned 17, leaving Brentford almost empty-handed. "We were competing against the likes of Manchester City, who probably spend more on just youth scouting in London than we did on running our academy. Put on top of that our geographical location with big club neighbours like Chelsea, Spurs and Arsenal. So, we were in a difficult position and we felt we had to do something different to be able to compete. Looking at different opportunities, we ended up with the decision to close our academy and create a B-team structure instead. "That’s where we moved to become a late-stage investor recruiting more mature players at age 17 or 18. The idea is that when you invest in a 17 year old player you pay more for him than when he was 7 years old, but it is justified by the fact that you also have a lot more certainty that he will have a successful career. Looking back at the last three years we are very pleased with that decision," reflects Ankersen. No reason to hide that Looking at the numbers, Brentford used to spend £2 million a year on running the academy - now they spend £1-1.5 million on their B-team instead. Since the start of the summer of 2016, 16 members of the B-team have made their debut on the first team. "When you do elite youth development there are mainly two ways to measure success. Are you developing players to play in your first team? And can you sell the players you develop with a profit? At the end of the day talent development is a business, and like in any other business you want a return on your investment.” “When we closed our academy we got a lot of criticism for thinking about it as a business because it involved young people. I acknowledge that an academy can serve other purposes, for example to play a role in the community, but an academy is also a business, and there is no reason to hide that. At Brentford FC we have a very successful community trust that makes a huge difference within the community. That’s not a business, but an elite academy is.” He explains that to create a B-team was just part of the strategy implemented four years ago by Brentford FC, who are currently in fourth position in the Championship and pushing for promotion - presumably via the play-offs as WBA in second place are ten points ahead. We wanted to break with that model "In the traditional English club model there is a manager in charge of pretty much both short term and long term decisions at the club. We don’t think that’s particularly good for player development because a manager on average has his job for 14-16 months. If that’s your average life span, how far are you going to think ahead? Probably until next Saturday. Are you going to take a risk playing a young prospect rather than buying an experienced player even though that might be the right decision for the club in the medium to long term? Probably not.“ That is why Brentford have a first-team coach, not a manager, and the responsibility of the B-team is on the shoulders of the two sporting directors. “At Brentford we wanted to break with that model and therefore we don’t have have a manager, but a head coach. His job is to win the games on Saturday, and he needs to be very good at that, but he is not in charge of recruitment and the academy model at the club. That responsibility sits with myself and Phil Giles, and our job is first and foremost to secure that Brentford is successful not only this season but also in five and 10 years.” “The same goes for player development. You want to take a long term view on that too. When you buy a player, how do you want him to develop? What kind of player do you want him to be in 1-2 years? It is very difficult for the head coach to take such a long term view on players because the main part of his job is to win on Saturday, and that’s one of the main reasons why we decided a few years ago to appoint an individual development coach who basically has one job and that is to focus on developing our 6-7 biggest player assets.” A first team without being a first team “The individual development coach is one example of how we have tried to build a structure around player development that fits our business model. The core of our business is to make a profit every year on player trading so we need not only to be able to find players with potential, but also to increase their value by developing them while they are in the building.” A key part of Brentford’s player development model is their investment into the B-team which travels all over Europe to play some of the top teams on the continent. "Our B-team is the closest you get to a first team without being a first team. The number of staff and specialists that help these players develop matches what you see in many first team environments”, says Ankersen. The recruitment at the B-team focuses primarily on two type of players: rejects from the UK and top talents from overseas. “When we recruit players at the age of 17 or 18 years old it is difficult to attract the best English talent, so instead we are focusing on picking up some of those players who have been released by the big clubs or don’t see a pathway to the first team there. One example is Paris Maghoma who we recruited from Tottenham some months back. We believe he is a player with lots of potential, but making it into Tottenhams first team is very difficult. "In that way I actually think our B-team is playing an important role for the whole eco-system of youth development because we pick up some of those talented players who are late bloomers or who has got stuck at a big club.” Diverse games programme “Our second focus in terms of recruitment is small and medium sized countries within Europe. Here, we have a very good story to tell to some of the most talented players. Brentford can be their pathway to the Championship or even Premier League. At the moment we have players like Jan Zamburek and Mads Roerslev who started playing for the B-team but have now broken into the first team. They are both youth internationals for Czech Republic and Denmark.” Ankersen says that basically what they try to do is to differentiate their product. “If you are a company in any other industry you need to think about how you can be different and how you make your product unique. The B-team model is our answer to that” Brentford's B-team play matches against reserve teams from all over the country, and quite often they also travel to the Continent to play reserve teams from clubs like AC Milan and Bayern Munich. Ankersen believes that playing against continental teams will develop the players because they constantly need to adapt to new and varied opponents. "If you are a player in a category 2 academy in England you pretty much only play against other category 2 players in the same age group. We don’t believe that’s the best way of developing players. The key for us is to create a diverse games programme where you play against many different styles of football and different age groups. They might play a classy midfielder from Bayern Munich one day, and a few days later they will play a team in the London Middlesex Cup - where they play semi-professionals on lousy pitches.” Proximity of role models Another thing which is very different at Brentford FC is the way they mingle the first team and the B-team. Most clubs "protect" the first-team players by creating an environment in which they are relatively isolated - but Brentford do it very differently. "Some years back I went to Kenya to study why a small town there produce the worlds best marathon runners, and what I saw was that the young talents every day trained alongside some of the biggest stars in the world. I mean, if you run 10 strides behind the guy who won the world championship last year there is a good chance you think: “If he can do it, why can’t I?”. That proximity of role models is very powerful in a talent environment, but unfortunately in football we are very busy separating our first team players from everyone else because we want to remove all distractions. They almost never see each other, and we tried to change that with the B-team. The B-team players are around the first team players all day long. They eat together, they are in the gym together, and it helps creates belief among the B-team players because after a while they realise that the first team players are just human like themselves. I guess you could say that proximity helps demystify what it takes to become really good," says Ankersen. -------- FACTS: Brentford set-up Brentford FC closed their academy at the end of the 2015/16 season and started the B-team in the summer of 2016. The previous set-up: Brentford FC ran an academy from under-8 to under-16 and then had a Youth Team (under-17 and under-18) and a development squad (under-23 officially). Current set-up - first team and B-team: 22 players on "B-team contracts" for the second half of the 19/20 season, including the two players on loan from Danish side FC Midtjylland. Staff involved with the First Team and B-Team: Brentford have specific B-team roles for Head Coach, Assistant Coach, Technical Lead, Goalkeeper Coach, Strength and Conditioning Coach, Analyst, Kit Manager and Assistant and Communications Lead. Facilities: The training ground has five full size pitches and other grass areas to work in. The B-team have their own dressing room, boot room and gym. Where do the B-team players come from?: The current 22-player squad has five from England, three from Denmark, three Scots, three Welsh youth internationals, two from France, two from Sweden, a Latvian youth international, a Cypriot youth international, one from Finland and one from Czech Republic. 16 B-team players have made their first team debut the last four years.

Ritchie definitely needs to be benched rest of this season but will be helpful to have him around the club during the transition period as he is already familiar with the "Howe way"

Rafa has direct contacts to Brown, McParland and Mandy. He won't need to use the Media to get his message across if he is really looking to leave

If the new training complex and nenovations and/or relocation of SJP costs another few hundred million quid, Amanda may have difficulty keeping up as she is a mere millionaire compared to Reubens' billions

Good read on Emenalo https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/jul/19/michael-emenalo-the-narrative-that-white-is-good-has-to-change

Might as well throw Manuel Pellegrini's name in. He has done it before with Man City and is a fairly big name in World football. At 68, he is probably not looking long term anyway. Only bummer is he is currently with Real Betis