Newcastle United correspondent Chris Waugh has been speaking on the latest edition of The Athletic Football podcast following the Toon’s takeover.
The Tyneside club saw the Mike Ashley era come to an end last week with the Saudi Arabian-based consortium taking over the club for a reported £300m.
What do NUFC need more?
Left-back
Centre-back
Striker
Newcastle’s majority owners are reportedly worth an estimated £320bn and naturally, the transfer speculation has already begun ahead of the January window.
The Toon have been linked with a number of household names following the takeover, with the Magpies currently sitting second-bottom in the Premier League.
Discussing the type of players he expects the Magpies to target in the January window, Waugh had the following to say:
“I think that they will survive and I also think in January, there will be money spent. I don’t necessarily expect that to be an absolutely massive splurge.
“It’s been put to me at the minute that the way they’re looking at it maybe is there’ll be sort of low tens of millions potentially spent, maybe on three or four key positions.
“They don’t really have a left-back, they’ve been playing Matt Ritchie – who’s a right-winger – as a left-back. They need a dominant centre-back and they need a striker. I’d say that they’re the three positions key, probably as a midfielder as well, if they’re going to target in January.”
TIF Thoughts on Newcastle’s January window…
January is notoriously a transfer window in which not too much business is done by clubs in comparison to what we often see throughout the summer window.
Given the Toon are in the middle of a relegation scrap, we don’t think fans should set their expectations too high for the calibre of player they will be able to attract.
Even though the Toon have an incredible amount of wealth behind them and enormous levels of ambition from the new owners, they have asked for patience from the fans.
And we think their long-term plans will be seen through the gradual improvement of the squad in the upcoming transfer windows.
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