• last year
Newcastle look set to complete the signing of Sandro Tonali from AC Milan to get their 2023 transfer window underway. But is this just the first of many big-money deals that they'll be involved in this summer, or after 2 seasons of major spending are the club risking breaking the Premier League's Financial Fair Play rules?
Transcript
00:00 The transfer window for Newcastle United fans used to be something to be endured rather
00:08 than enjoyed. Previous seasons under Mike Ashley would see long, drawn-out months of
00:11 claim and counter-claim before a handful of affordable players would arrive late in the
00:15 window with the manager expected to simply do the best he could with them. One famous
00:20 slice of club history includes Steve Bruce frantically running around on deadline day
00:23 trying to push through a number of moves, only to be told by a local journalist that
00:27 the club's staff required to sign off the funds and organise the paperwork for any deals
00:31 had already gone home for the day. But that, to the Geordie faithful, feels like an entire
00:36 other life ago. They are now routinely and credibly linked with the best players in the
00:40 world and this summer might well see some of them arrive at St James' Park. The problem
00:45 though is that even the richest club in the world still needs to make the numbers work
00:50 under the constraints of financial fair play. This is how much money Newcastle United can
00:55 actually spend. Eddie Howe's side ended the 22/23 season
00:59 in the frankly astonishing position of fourth. Despite their tag as the quote-unquote richest
01:04 club in the world, the constraints put on Premier League spending by FFP has seen them
01:08 spend relatively modestly since their 2021 takeover. Fans of other clubs tend to find
01:13 the modest spending claim a contentious one, but thus far it's been true. Last season
01:18 they were the league's joint fifth biggest spenders with Nottingham Forest, coughing
01:21 up only £10 million more than Tottenham and Wolves. They spent £10 million less than
01:26 West Ham, over £50 million less than Man United and almost an astonishing £400 million
01:32 less than Chelsea. In each of the four seasons prior, they ranked in the bottom half of the
01:37 league on net spend. A fair chunk of the criticism directed at
01:44 former owner Mike Ashley wasn't merely that he lacked ambition for the club, but that
01:48 he actively held it back from punching its own weight. Newcastle consistently had the
01:52 highest matchday revenue for any club outside the top six, and thanks to the size of their
01:57 fanbase, enjoyed a significant chunk of the 25% Premier League broadcast revenue that's
02:03 distributed to clubs based on television appearances. And yet, if you average out Newcastle's transfer
02:08 net spend over his 14-year tenure, they spent just over £13 million per season.
02:15 Most astonishing of all, the club's commercial revenue somehow shrank 37% during this time
02:21 when every other Premier League side grew theirs by 200, 300, 400, in some cases even
02:27 over 1,000%. Newcastle weren't just not spending what
02:32 they were making, they were actively pursuing frugality as a business model. Their new owners,
02:36 however, are upfront about their ambitions to not only re-establish the standing the
02:40 club had prior to Mike Ashley's tenure, but to actively push beyond the meagre glories
02:44 of the past and become one of the most consistently successful teams in Europe. To do this, though,
02:49 requires enormous sums of money. But despite now being part-backed by PIF,
02:55 the Saudi Arabian Sovereign Wealth Fund, and having access to the estimated £500 billion
03:00 the organisation has for its various projects, Premier League teams are required to spend
03:05 within their means as a business. This is FFP at its very core. If Newcastle somehow
03:10 found themselves with a turnover in the billions, then they could spend into the billions, but
03:15 that is not their reality. At the time of the takeover, club turnover
03:18 was estimated at £140 million. Tottenham, for context, operate just below the £450
03:25 million mark. This is partly because of the greatly increased commercial revenue, but
03:28 also the income from regularly qualifying for Europe. In the 18 months since the takeover,
03:33 this has already increased by 50% to £180 million. And that's before you factor in
03:38 the minimum £30 million boost they'll receive from returning to the Champions League, or
03:42 any commercial deals signed ahead of the new season.
03:45 The appointment of Darren Eales as Chief Executive Officer was seen as vital for rapidly expanding
03:49 the club's various non-competition revenue streams, and his job is arguably as important
03:54 off the pitch as Eddie Howes is on it. The bottom line with FFP is that clubs over
03:59 a three-year rolling period cannot make a loss of more than £105 million, effectively
04:06 meaning you can spend £35 million, be that on transfers, development, wages, infrastructure,
04:11 a new stadium, what have you, beyond your income every season.
04:15 Under Premier League rules, certain costs like improving vital facilities, community
04:18 projects or developing your women's team are exempt from this, but by and large, these
04:23 are the restrictions you're working under. So if, for example, your turnover was £100
04:27 million and your wages and other footballing-related expenditure came to £60 million, then the
04:32 £40 million you have left over, plus the £35 million you're allowed to overspend,
04:36 would give you £75 million to put into transfers. However, in the season of the takeover, Newcastle
04:40 lost well in excess of this £35 million on transfers, actually coming in at over a £70
04:46 million operating loss, purely because Mike Ashley's tight purse strings had given them
04:51 that sort of wiggle room in the three-year rolling period.
04:54 They were able to do this again last season with the arrivals of Anthony Gordon and Alexander
04:58 Isak pushing their spending north of the £150 million mark, but moving into their third
05:03 year, this spending is not, as it stands, sustainable. In fact, had the club not qualified
05:09 for the Champions League or developed behind the scenes, they'd likely only be looking
05:13 at around £50 million for new arrivals this summer.
05:16 Their wage bill alone, naturally skyrocketing as they attract a higher standard of player,
05:21 now stands at around 95% of their total turnover, leaving very little left to spend on new players.
05:27 So the headline here for Newcastle fans is this. What qualifies as the club's days of
05:32 big spending are technically now behind them. The club's sporting director, Dan Ashworth,
05:37 has already said himself that the current outlay on transfers is not something that
05:42 could continue at their present level. They've incurred significant losses in the last two
05:46 seasons, but these were offset by the negligence of the previous ownership. From this season
05:50 onwards, they won't be. Newcastle spent just over £150 million last season and recouped
05:56 £20 million from the sales of John Jo Shelby and Chris Wood. The season prior, they spent
06:01 £110 million attempting to avoid relegation, but didn't bring in a single penny from
06:05 player sales. That's a net spend of £260 million over the two seasons. But factoring
06:11 in the comparatively paltry £30 million spent by Ashley in his last full season at the club,
06:15 averages the three-year period out at little over £90 million a time.
06:20 It's a huge oversimplification, yes, but presuming that the club's other football
06:24 operations like wages and infrastructure take it to around 100% of its revenue, then this
06:29 £90 million comes in at under the £105 million allowed by FFP. One thing it's worth pointing
06:34 out here though is that FFP isn't as simple as you spend £30 million on a player and
06:39 £30 million then counts towards your total. Deals are actually spread out across the duration
06:44 of the contract. Newcastle did not have, for example, £60 million spare in FFP terms to
06:49 spend on Alexander Isak last summer, but signing him to a five-year contract meant that, in
06:54 actual fact, he cost them £12 million that season. The only issue is that he'll cost
06:59 them another £12 million this season and every season after that for the duration of
07:03 the contract. That said though, what a club spends in total
07:06 outlay over a season is usually a good indicator of what spending they're committed to on
07:11 top of that. If Newcastle spent £150 million in one window, it likely means that the impact
07:16 of those buys, plus those carried over costs from previous years, add up to a similar amount.
07:21 Joe Linton, for example, signed for £40 million on a six-year deal in 2019, so is costing
07:26 them, as far as FFP is concerned, just over £6.5 million every season until 2025.
07:33 So where does this leave them? Well, the hands would have been significantly more tied this
07:37 season than in the previous two, but qualifying for the Champions League alleviates this pressure
07:41 significantly. However, shopping in the same aisles and spending the same sums as teams
07:45 who consistently qualify for this tournament would still not be a smart move. Were they
07:49 to drop out of the top four, this would leave them paying elite-level fees and wages in
07:54 seasons where they weren't receiving the income to justify them.
07:57 Newcastle ideally want to use the allure of Champions League football to attract a higher
08:01 standard of player, not merely the revenue of Champions League football. And that means
08:06 that player sales are, for the first time under the new owners, about to become a major
08:10 part of the business model. Were the club finally able to get the £40 million they
08:14 previously offered Alan St Maximan a round for, they could yet again be looking at spending
08:19 over £150 million this summer. But beyond him, there isn't an obvious, significant
08:23 saleable asset currently at the club. Big names like Bruno Guimaraes, Alexander Isak
08:28 and Sven Botman would command major fees, but have only recently arrived and will be
08:32 vital for maintaining their league position next season. But if, in the years beyond that,
08:36 the club are offered the chance to treble or quadruple their investment in them, they
08:40 would absolutely need to take that and hope they can reinvest the money smartly.
08:44 This arguably makes the signing of the aforementioned Dan Ashworth from Brighton to come in as
08:48 sporting director a more important transfer than those three players combined. If Newcastle
08:53 could become as proficient at developing players and turning a profit on them as his former
08:57 team, then that will afford them an enormous degree of spending power in the years it takes
09:01 for their commercial and other revenue streams to catch up with Europe's biggest clubs.
09:06 But what can they actually spend this season? Newcastle, as mentioned, would have been looking
09:10 at around a £50 million transfer kitty. The £25 million shirt sponsorship with Saudi
09:16 organisation CELA still puts them some way short of the £40 million commanded by their
09:21 rivals for the same thing, but is still a huge leap on from the £6 million Fun88 were
09:26 paying for that exact position. Coincidentally, the Asian betting firm are staying on as a
09:30 commercial partner, adding them to the growing list of new business ventures that would be
09:33 able to swell their spending further. This would likely take them, at a conservative
09:37 estimate, into the £70-80 million bracket, possibly even beyond.
09:42 But this growth in revenue, combined with the increased competition money from Champions
09:46 League qualification, will put them firmly over the £100 million mark this summer in
09:52 terms of what's available. Without player sales adding to this fund, and with the club
09:56 likely to keep some in reserve in case any major surgery is needed in January, they're
10:00 unlikely to have broken that £100 million barrier by the time the window closes on September
10:05 1st. However, given their previous history of going
10:08 after their top targets and not being afraid to push right up to the limits of what FFP
10:13 will allow, it's equally possible that they could surpass last summer's £120 million
10:18 if they feel the market is right for it. Regardless though, while the club are always
10:21 keen to play down their spending power when asked, and readily admit they have a lot to
10:25 learn about football at this level, if there's one thing they seem to have gotten to grips
10:28 with that the likes of Chelsea or Everton haven't, it's that it isn't how much
10:32 you spend, it's how well you spend it. And for the club's fans, even having owners
10:37 that seem to get that is priceless.

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