“Premier League proven.” Three words that turn a £15m winger into a £70m asset overnight. It’s the excuse trotted out by agents, pundits and more than a few managers, Eddie Howe included, to justify the eye-watering fees dominating the domestic market. But when we’re involved, buying or selling, that logic tends to evaporate.
Let’s take stock.
🧨 Matheus Cunha just joined Manchester United after they triggered his £62.5m release clause. A technical, inconsistent second striker with 12 league goals last season. Good? Sure. But £62.5m?
🦅 Mohammed Kudus, explosive, two-footed, chaos player, was signed by West Ham for £38m in 2023. Now they want £85m. But Spurs have bid £50m and talks are still ongoing, which tells you West Ham know full well he’s not worth £85m.
🍒 Bournemouth reportedly want £70m for Antoine Semenyo, who they signed two and a half years ago for £10m. He’s a handful. Powerful, direct. But he’s never scored more than 11 league goals in a season. £70m?
🐝 Bryan Mbuemo is said to be valued between £60–70m by Brentford. He’s just off a “20-goal season”, except:
– 5 of those were penalties
– He dramatically overperformed his non-penalty xG (0.4 per 90 from just 0.2 xG)
– Brentford do have an option to extend his contract to 2026
Still, you’d be paying top-end money for finishing that’s likely to regress.
🌀 We bid £50m for João Pedro. It seems as though he never wanted to come here anyway so he ended up at Chelsea in a deal worth up to £60m. (Too much for someone who is just not a 20 goal a season CF) So we pivoted to Anthony Elanga, who had a solid season at Forest… and paid £55m.
Some see that as smart business. Young, homegrown, huge upside. But if one good season of Elanga is worth £55m, how are we only pulling in…
$10m for Miguel Almirón, who, for all his limitations, gave us 39 goal contributions in the Premier League and was our top scorer in 2022/23?
Or £12m for Sean Longstaff, 170 PL appearances, Champions League goals, integral to our top-four finish?
Where’s our Premier League premium?
Yes, we did sell Lloyd Kelly to Juventus for £20m, but this was not part of the plan and we were fortunate enough to find a club even worse at getting value in the market than us! (I mean, I’d be sick if we swapped Dean Huijsen for Lloyd Kelly in the space of 12 months and made a loss on that…)
Where we did get value:
To be fair, we’ve pulled off some brilliant deals:
Trippier for £12m. Captain. Culture-setter. Delivery from heaven.
Dan Burn for £10m. Local lad, flexible, key to some of our biggest nights. Including THAT goal.
Nick Pope for £12m. One of the league’s best keepers before injury hit. Has more than proven his worth.
Isak at just over £60m? Already worth £100m+.
Bruno Guimarães at £33m? Easily the best value signing of the PIF era.
Anthony Gordon at £45m? England international now, and rising.
Even the eye-watering ones may yet prove wise. Tino Livramento and Lewis Hall cost £75m combined despite just 39 senior league games between them at the time. But Tino was electric in the run-in. Hall visibly matured across the season and even secured an England call-up before injury halted his progress. Both look like long-term starters for years to come.
Tonali? Ban aside, class on the pitch. £55m is still be a bargain given how immense he was last season.
The only lingering question mark is Harvey Barnes. £45m, and while he stepped up when Gordon was injured, he doesn’t press or suit the system. Still feels like a poor tactical fit, even if the quality is there.
💲The PSR stranglehold
Then there’s the mess we found ourselves in last summer. Not to re-tread old ground, but the hefty fees we shelled out forced us into the embarrassing situation we found ourselves in last summer. We didn’t want to sell Elliot Anderson or Minteh. We had to. Not to fund a marquee signing, but to stay compliant.
Now we’re spending £55m on Elanga, are being held to ransom for £30-£40m for James Trafford. A fee that would make him one of the 5 most expensive goalkeepers ever. Is that where the money needs to go?
🤷♂️*Final word: The PIF paradox*
Let’s not forget who owns us. PIF. A sovereign wealth fund with assets north of half a trillion. You’d think that gives us leverage. Access. Strategic heft.
Instead, the very same PIF has propped up rivals like Chelsea via the new Club World Cup, which could hand them five times what they earned for winning the Conference League
And yet, when it comes to Newcastle United, the only European club in the PIF portfolio, they’ve dragged their heels on stadium expansion, slow-walked senior appointments, and failed to meaningfully address our constraints under PSR.
They’ve made the market harder, handed our rivals windfalls, and left us sweating over whether DCL would be a shrewd penny-pinching signing (he wouldn’t…)
It’s not just frustrating, it’s negligent.
If we’re going to thrive, not just survive, in this warped, bloated ecosystem, then we need PIF to start acting like owners of a club they care about, not just one they picked up as a side project.
Because right now? We’re getting mugged at both ends of the deal sheet, and our own backers are standing there holding the door open for everyone else.
