Graham Carr privately said Mike Ashley would never spend more than £15million on a single player while he owned Newcastle United, according to a reliable journalist.
Chronicle football editor Mark Douglas, writing in a column for the newspaper, claimed that Carr gave up trying to recommend expensive players to the Ashley regime during his lengthy spell as the club’s recruitment chief.
“He would put players into the board that would cost more than £15million but soon realised that there was no real will to go out and get them,” Douglas explained.
Newcastle missed out on signing Loic Remy on two occasions, Michy Batshuayi, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette during this time, due to Ashley’s reluctance to spend big.
OPINION
It will infuriate Newcastle fans that Ashley’s caution prevented them from signing strikers who have ripped it up in recent years and now command £50million-plus transfer fees, which is what Arsenal paid for Aubameyang and Lacazette in the last two windows. It will make the Toon faithful fume even more that Carr, who was the chief scout from 2010 to 2017, gave up even trying to sign semi-expensive players, let alone those in the top bracket. Talk about lack of ambition. What has changed now? Is Ashley’s £15million secret ceiling still the case 12 months after Carr left the club? Only time will tell, although the noises coming from those who cover the club is that Rafael Benitez has a transfer kitty to work with, and can spend it how he sees fit. This should mean the 13-year transfer record, that has stood since Michael Owen was signed from Real Madrid back in the days when Newcastle set the transfer pace rather than trailed in its wake, should be smashed. We will see.
