OPINION
Footballers don’t tend to come out and say exactly what they’re thinking the majority of the time, so you generally have to read between the lines.
That is very much the case with Newcastle United captain Jamaal Lascelles’s latest comments on the club’s work in the transfer market.
Essentially you can discover what the Magpies skipper thinks about the team’s recent transfer activity by this line: “It’s about that belief because we haven’t really been buying a load of players over the last few years so it’s nice we’ve bought a striker in and hopefully, he does a really good job for us,” which he said, as per The Chronicle’s news and transfer centre [29/07; 14:31].
The relief that Lascelles feels that the club have been active in the transfer market and splashed a significant sum on attacker Joelinton is absolutely palpable.
Clearly he realises that if the team are going to compete towards the upper echelon of the Premier League table then they’ll need to spend a bit of cash.
However, as he says, that hasn’t really been happening in recent years. As per Transfer League, the season they secured promotion back to the top flight their net spend was -£30million. The next summer, with Premier League football back on the agenda, it was just +£10million.
Those aren’t big sums of money, and it was only the January addition of winger Miguel Almiron on a then-club record fee that bumped last campaign’s net spend to around £20million.
So Lascelles is right in what he says. Newcastle haven’t been spending money in Premier League terms, not even close. With the amount of TV money coming into the club it’s bizarre how little they’ve splashed out.
It’s clearly something that baffles the captain, with his true feelings revealed in a passing comment, here.
