Why Newcastle United's decision to opt out of signings like Jesse Lingard is a positive thing
The 29-year-old attacking midfielder is available this summer as a free agent, but high wage demands make it a risky proposition.
When I make the following points, it is important to remember that Jesse Lingard remains a fantastic player. He would have been a real asset at Newcastle United and would represent a significant improvement on some of the current squad. With that said though, I’m very glad to see the club’s new owners refusing to be sucked in by easily justifiable, but ultimately very expensive, signings like these.
Instead, the club has targeted low-cost experience in the likes of Matt Targett and Nick Pope so far. Our significant financial outlays have come on young talents – pursuing Hugo Ekitike and Sven Botman, who at 20 and 22 years old respectively, represent stars not only for now but the future too.
Lingard doesn’t represent this. He’s still young enough to have a number of very good years ahead of him, and with a wealth of Premier League experience under his belt already, he’s likely to hit the ground running at whichever club he does end up at. His loan spell at West Ham proved he could do as much.
As a free transfer, it is almost impossible to imagine that a Premier League team won’t take a gamble on Lingard this summer.
Yet, he is being followed around the free agency market this summer with one significant caveat. A caveat which is why I am pleased, at least for now, Newcastle’s new owners have waved off any interest.
Lingard and his representatives were pushing for a salary reported to be in the range of £150k-£200k a week. Even as a star player in a Premier League side, for many of the clubs in the league that would represent a dangerous gamble to make. Newcastle are one of those clubs.
The Magpies may, at least on paper, be the richest club in the world right now, but there is still a wage structure which existed from before the takeover. A signing like Lingard, if his original wage demands were met, would blow that structure squarely out of the water – and begin to introduce a wealth of new, unnecessary challenges for the club.
Eddie Howe has pushed the importance of team spirit throughout the club’s miracle run in the second half of the season and introducing players into that dressing room on wildly high wages will only damage that close bond. Resentment will grow, while other players who feel they are as important to the team will quickly, and often vocally, demand wage increases of their own. Things can spiral rapidly, all while the original players – often quite mercenary in nature – sit back and pick up their significant wage packets each week.
This type of approach rarely correlates to success. Especially not long-term, sustainable success.
Thankfully, Newcastle’s new ownership seem to have little interest in going down that path either. There will be a point where £150k-a-week wages are commonplace on Tyneside, but not for a while yet. Instead, it is about building smartly, slowly and incrementally.
Signing steady, stabilising players like Targett and Pope, backed by exciting young stars like Ekitike and Botman – who often arrive with slightly lower wage demands, and can come up along the journey with the club – provides a more sustainable footing than splashing the cash big and early on the likes of Lingard.
Equally, the summer transfer window is long. While I find it highly unlikely to be the case, should Lingard’s very high wage demands put off all teams and he remains unattached towards the very end of the window, there may still be the opportunity to jump back into discussions and secure a cut-price deal late in the window, when the club finds itself in the position of power in negotiations rather than the player.
It will be interesting to watch what happens with the likes of Lingard this summer, but at least for now, it has been encouraging to watch Newcastle’s new owners squarely turn their back on these types of inflated deals. We want long-term success at St. James’ Park and shattering the wage structure early risks the club fizzling out early or having to haemorrhage money in the short-to-medium term until significant success arrives.