Niall Quinn thinks Newcastle are playing transfer market games.
Posted on May 17th, 2010 | 62 Comments |
Sunderland Chairman Niall Quinn is wary of the statement issued by Newcastle United owner Mike Ashley that claims we wont be spending much money over the summer, or any at all depending on which version of capital outlay you lean towards believing.
But let’s not turn this into another debate about what capital outlay means eh? A lot of clubs will be cutting their cloth in the near future, anxious not to follow in the footsteps of teams like Portsmouth and Hull with teams like West Ham United and Liverpool balanced dangerously on the edge of a financial precipice. Despite this though, Quinn has doubts over the sincerity of our apparent new austerity measures:
“They could be playing a clever game,” Quinn said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Chris Hughton has loads of money to spend.”
I would be very surprised if what Quinn says has a ring of truth in it, and whilst it would be nice to have ‘loads of money to spend’, it isn’t what most fans are wishing for, certainly not what I am wishing for anyway. Sure it would be nice, but if we can’t afford it then we can’t afford it. What I do want is sensible investment in the playing squad that will give us the optimum chance of stopping up. Expectations are lower nowadays, with many resigned to accepting avoiding relegation as success, which is something Quinn agrees with:
“They may have set themselves up a little bit when Mike took them on, there was a new pressure because he was bringing so much money into the club, the outside world thought, ‘This is it, Newcastle are going to be in the top four’. This time around I’m sure they’ve learnt an awful lot to give a lesser message out and anything better is a bonus.”
Whether lowering expectations is a good thing or a bad thing is up for debate. On one hand it lowers pressure, but for a support that has been used to money being sloshed around on big name players for a number of years previously, the lack of money has come as a bit of a culture shock.
Of course we will need the observe the summer transfer window as a whole to see just how much other teams are tightening their collective belts, and you can always expect some exceptions to what is becoming recognised more and more as a financial crisis in football. Roman Abramovich has already set the target for Chelsea to be self sufficient in the near future whilst Aston Villa supremo Randy Lerner stated that Villa will be selling to buy over the summer.
I’m not really interested in what the others are doing in the transfer window though, unless it involves Newcastle. Don’t get me wrong, I will have one eye glancing at activity elsewhere, but I am more focussed on what we will be doing and whether Chris Hughton is given the best possible chance of guiding the team to survival come the end of the season.
Time will tell I guess.
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
What’s any of what we do got to do with him,
feeling under pressure niall?