Owen - We don’t want too many signings similar to this guy anytime soon

The day we splashed a record-breaking £15m to bring Alan Shearer to Newcastle from Premier League winning Blackburn Rovers, the footballing world came to a standstill and admired the Tyneside team for their courage in doing so, or at least we like to think they did! What a signing Alan Shearer turned about to be though, a true predator in front of goal and one of the best English strikers ever, if not the. We seemed to be quite pleased with the way that signing so we went and bought ourselves a £17m Michael Owen, £10m Albert Luque and an £8m Jean-Alain Boumsong, all of which turned out to be a lot less desirable than their price tags.

However, in the last few years we’ve calmed down just a little and indeed this year, the big spending stopped. We stuck to free-transfers and two million pound signings and we’re back in the Premier League because of it.

The news in the last couple of days is that Chris Hughton has been handed £15m to keep Newcastle United in the Premier League and he’ll have to squeeze every penny he can out of it.

Speaking about the transfer market today, he said :

“As per normal these talks are ongoing with the chairman and the owner but we know they are different times these days,‘

“I think certainly the days of the sums of big transfers and the big transfer kitties – not only for Newcastle but for everybody – they are a thing of the past. I think you have to spend and look to improve but you have to do it wisely.

_ “What I am conscious of is that we have a real competitive squad that has generated a really good momentum this season and what we have had is players who have also developed this season and there is a group of lads and a squad that I have that deserve an opportunity.”

We’ll certainly need to buy as my headline suggests and buy big if you ask me. The likes of Kevin Nolan, Fabricio Coloccini and Alan Smith will find it hard in the Premier League again so let’s not be fooling ourselves in thinking they’ll be leading stars.

We have faith in all of our squad for the forthcoming season but there’s a huge amount of work to be done with this side if we want to avoid relegation. We need a striker, and a proven one. That itself will be a challenge.

If we do manage to buy and buy wisely, which I’m sure Chrissy Hughton will indeed do then we’ve every chance of being a Premier League come May 2011.

Comments welcome 🙂

---

Share article on: