It has been a summer of huge change at Newcastle upon Tyne. With the sales of Sandro Tonali, Bruno Guimarães and Anthony Gordon for 108, 87 and 80 million euros respectively, Newcastle have raised 275 million euros (according to Transfermarkt).
At first, the arrivals of Sandro Tonali, Anthony Gordon and Alexander Isak (transferred to Liverpool for a Premier League record fee of 145 million euros) represented an unprecedented investment for Newcastle and were a show of strength from newly arrived majority owners PIF (Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund).
These signings of proven players who could also be sold on for a profit set the course PIF wanted to follow, with the aim of returning Newcastle to European qualification places. But in order to sustain that spending without having to cut costs abruptly, Newcastle needed to keep producing very strong league performances year after year — something that, given the extremely high level of competition in the Premier League, is difficult to achieve. That has forced the club to sell several of its best players.
So far, so clear. The change comes once Newcastle decide they need to sell more this summer than originally planned, and, as a result, revise their roadmap. In-league signings within the Premier League are getting more and more expensive, and looking further afield is starting to pay off more than one might think.
Despite having invested 313 million euros in 8 new players to reshape the squad, only one of them was bought from another Premier League club: Nico González, from Manchester City, for 56 million euros.
Of the remaining seven, only three arrived from clubs in Europe's other four major leagues (Bazoumana Touré, Hoffenheim; Aladji Bamba, Monaco; Matías Fernández-Pardo, Lille).
Of the three players who arrived to strengthen the midfield, the area of the pitch we're focusing on today, only one, Nico, has played more than one season as a first team regular.
Similar attributes spread across severe-needed alternatives
Losing two players of the stature and importance to Newcastle that Tonali and Guimarães had is undoubtedly a hard blow. The simple solution would have been replacing them with two proven signings similar in profile and characteristics to each of them. But that would have been expensive, risky and, frankly, complicated.
Faced with this difficulty, Newcastle changed course and signed three midfielders, each with their own characteristics, while also promoting Lewis Miley up the pecking order, the academy's big current project and a starter in both of Newcastle's league games this season.
This increase in midfield options will allow the team, and Mathias Jaissle, who has replaced Eddie Howe in the dugout, to approach matches and answer the questions opponents pose in ways they couldn't in the past.
That doesn't mean Newcastle have gone from having an advanced playmaker in Bruno Guimarães and an all action engine in Tonali to having none of that. They still have those foundations, those characteristics, just spread more evenly.
For example, with Sean Steur (2008; signed from Ajax), Newcastle have brought in a young orchestrating midfielder to drive the play from the first pass, much like Bruno Guimarães used to. Obviously, it needs to be made clear that Steur is not currently at Bruno Guimarães's level, Guimarães, after all, signed for the English champions, but in terms of profile there are similarities, and that's what interests us here.
Steur differs from Guimarães in that he tends to receive the ball in lower zones, closer to the centre backs, and relies much more on carrying the ball than the Brazilian does.
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