About a week ago I saw a flood of posts in The Mag’s comments section about young Newcastle United players leaving the club. As well as the usual well wishes for their future careers, there were also a number of accusations that youngsters under Eddie Howe are simply not being given a chance at the club.
Claims that Newcastle United’s young players are leaving to fulfill their potential elsewhere.
I simply believe that, upon closer examination, the facts simply do not support these claims.
In my opinion, they have been overblown by the PSR fiasco that saw the departure of two excellent candidates, Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh. Both are now firmly established as powerful weapons for their clubs, Nottingham Forest and Brighton. Elliot Anderson is now considered a vital part of England’s World Cup squad.
Another player who divided opinion upon his departure was Adam Armstrong. A busy forward with an eye for goal, ‘Arma’ was much loved by the fan base but fell victim to Rafa’s preference for Premier League experience over youthful promise as he was left without transfer funds due to the stingy policies of ‘Kind Mike’ Ashley.
Coincidentally, Adam enjoyed a very productive spell on loan at Coventry City and was a hit at Blackburn Rovers. Having lived in the area for many years I go to Ewood Park with friends when visiting family and the last time I was there he was man of the match and scored a great goal. His form at Blackburn earned him a move to the Premier League at Southampton, where he has had a credible, if unspectacular, career. Good luck to the lad, but – as a loan spell at West Brom suggests – he has hardly shown that he is “the one that got away”.
I think that title rests firmly with Elliot Anderson.
But these aren’t the only young players who have made progress in recent times.
Cathal Heffernan, a highly-touted Irish prospect, has made a permanent move to Harrogate Town. Garang Kuol had previously moved on to Sparta Prague. Neither had appeared for the first team in League action. Interestingly, Cathal moved to Tyneside from AC Milan so had probably never seen a Mackem until his arrival at Newcastle International Airport!
Kuol’s departure in particular sparked interest as he was hailed as the proverbial ‘wunderkind’ after signing for £350,000 (transfer fees quoted are from various media sources) from Australian club Central Coast Mariners FC. In any case, the fee received of £580,000 (plus no doubt the possible extras if it were sold for a profit) meant that it had made almost a quarter of a million in profits.
That small profit pales in comparison to the amount made from the sale of Yankuba Minteh. We paid Danish side Odense £8m for him – far more than any of the club’s other youth signings. They say you have to speculate to accumulate, and this proved to be the case with Minteh, who secured a respectable £35 million from Brighton.
No doubt Odense will have enjoyed a small windfall as a result of a sell-on clause included in their sale agreement, but with Brighton’s track record of developing and selling on talent for huge profits, we may find ourselves the recipients of something substantially more than that in the future.
What bothers us as NUFC supporters, of course, is the fact that his sale was necessary at all. Due to a perceived misjudgment of the PSR by the club (which may have ultimately been responsible for the departure of much-loved Amanda Staveley) Minteh and Anderson were both moved in a last-ditch effort to balance the books.
The only other recent young import with any Premier League experience was Harrison Ashby, who has also moved, but on loan, to Bradford City (along with local boy Joe White). Signed from West Ham in January 2023, Ashby came close to breaking into the matchday squad but never quite got there and spent spells on loan at Swansea and QPR.
Who exactly are our ‘prodigies’ and where are they now?
After extensively searching sites such as Transfermarket, Wikipedia, The Mag and the Chronicle, I have done my best to compile a definitive list of all the youth signings made by our three football directors appointed (so far!) by the current owners. I’ve ignored the local boys who have gone through the age groups – these are the “imports”:
Young Newcastle United players brought to the club since the takeover:
To some extent the details of such deals are kept secret, especially if they involve very young players, with cases occasionally referred to tribunals to determine their valuation. Some of the valuations mentioned above are estimates and some are initial fees that will increase if certain targets are achieved. Putting the list together was a bit of a nightmare. I’ve done my best, but if you notice an odd error or omission, dear reader, please keep it to yourself!
As you can see, Yankuba Minteh is the biggest success financially, which I have already referred to. Had he not been on loan at Feyenoord, he would undoubtedly have played in the first team. None of the other ‘children’ on the list have succeeded so far.
What’s the point?
It seems clear that the club has noticed the success of Chelsea in particular. They have sucked in a wealth of young talent over the past decade, loaning most of them out and then recalling them at a later date, or cashing in on their success at the loan clubs. This has created some very healthy funds (which can be added to the proceeds from asset sales to themselves) to help them weather the effects of PSR. The £28 million for Lewis Hall was pure profit and it won’t stop there if we sell him for a lot of money, as they undoubtedly locked in a nice percentage of any future fees in the original transfer deal.
The hope is that we can emulate Chelsea by unearthing some football gems, developing them – often with the help of loan clubs – and then using them to strengthen our first-team pool or selling them on at a profit.
Other than that, this doesn’t seem to have been the case so far, but it’s just early days. Many of the guys on the list are still teenagers and could be good. Moreover, the majority have come without, or by modern standards, rather meager compensation. We have taken a closer look at promising young people and it is still too early to say whether this will bear fruit or not. That said, Minteh’s winnings will likely have paid all those fees and the boys’ wages and left a nice amount of change in the pot.
Three of the table cost a little more than average. Alfie Harrison apparently cost up to £3.5 million, of which £1 million was initially paid. Young Serbian Miodrag Pivas joined Jedinstvo Ub after paying a compensation fee of £678,000, but potential add-ons could reportedly take that up to £3m (depending on who you believe!). Turkish boy, Baran Yildiz, was signed to a contract that could reportedly earn his club, Genclerbirligi SK, up to £2.5 million.
Alfie is currently a regular with the NUFC under-21s but has been the subject of transfer speculation involving Birmingham City, but nothing has materialized three weeks into January. Presumably we would be looking at some decent compensation to cover our costs to date. The other two boys are also in the under-21 squad, but it is entirely possible that they will be loaned out along with Alfie to gain first-team experience.
Looking back at the list, two more guys stand out as more ‘prestigious’ signings. The first is Park Seung-soo, the Korean who joined from Suwon Samsung Bluewings for an undisclosed fee. Korean Mbappe, believed to be based on his pace rather than his record of one goal in 28 appearances, impressed fans in the pre-season games but has not featured for the first team so far. He will probably also move on loan.
The second is a young Georgian named Vakhtang Salia. Unfortunately, his involvement is minimal due to a hamstring injury. As a striker, he played 59 games for Dinamo Tbilisi before the age of 18, scoring 8 goals. Once again, no fee was disclosed, but his current market value on Transfermarket is said to be £800,000.
Three of the other boys are on loan. Travis Hernes is now on loan to Groningen in the Netherlands. Trevan Sanusi is on loan to Lorient in France. Antonito Cordero has returned to Spain, on a loan deal with Cadiz, looking for more first-team football after a lean spell at Belgian side KVCWesterlo.
All the other boys are still at the club and training with the under 21s or even younger age groups. Most of them are still very young and unlikely to feature in or around the matchday squad – apart from perhaps Sam Alabi, who appears to be a prodigious talent.
Have the boys been given a chance under Eddie Howe?
I would like to say three things there.
First, and I repeat, they are still young. Exposure to the pressure and physicality of the Premier League can ruin a young career before it even starts.
Second, I trust Eddie. He sees these players at training week in, week out and receives reports and statistics from the other coaches. He knows if they are ready.
Thirdly – and perhaps most importantly – these youngsters play against other League clubs every week and their players and coaches watch them. Where is all the interest in signing our second stringers? It just doesn’t seem to be there yet. I’m not saying they’re not good – see point 1 above!
So no more golden eggs have been laid yet. As a regular contributor in The Mag’s comments section has rightly said several times (not me, I hasten to add!), you generally get what you pay for. If you pay money for it, you can expect a fair share of those purchases to fade and disappear. But as Yankuba Minteh has shown (and remember, he was sold well before any planned money-making move) one success can more than compensate for a handful of failures.
So I’m going to add a new column to my own copy of the table headed ‘Profits Realized’ and I’ll be following the boys’ progress and ratings with great interest.
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