Newcastle United Need To Be Faster For January Signings To Succeed

Premier League clubs have made an unsurprisingly quiet start to the January transfer window, with only Aston Villa, Everton, Brighton and Hove Albion and Newcastle United making significant signings so far.

Villa’s loan signing of Barcelona playmaker Philippe Coutinho has grabbed the headlines, while Brighton’s signing of Polish youngster Kacper Kozlowski and Everton’s acquisition of highly-rated Ukrainian full back Vitaliy Mykolenko look more like good quality long-term signings.

Newcastle on the other hand need signings that have an impact in the short-term if they want to avoid relegation.

Despite being linked to everybody from unwanted stars like Coutinho and Tottenham Hotspur’s Dele Alli to mega-money signings like Lille defender Sven Botman and Bayer Leverkusen striker Patrik Schick, they’ve only managed to bring in England international Kieran Trippier from Atletico Madrid so far. They will need several more signings of his caliber to upgrade their defense, and unlike Everton and Brighton, they actually need to bring in those players early in the transfer window.

Newcastle’s current squad doesn’t seem to have enough quality to avoid relegation, and the “new manager bounce” they had after replacing Steve Bruce with Eddie Howe was more like jumping on an old mattress than on a trampoline. In his seven league games in charge, Eddie Howe has only won two more points than Bruce managed in his eight Premier League matches this season.

A statistical analysis by statsandsnakeoil.com suggests that Newcastle have a roughly 20% chance of staying up at the moment, and if they instantly improved their squad to the level of Wolverhampton Wanderers or Aston Villa then they would have a roughly 50% chance of being in the top flight next season. That’s a bigger jump than it might first seem; Villa have spent around $300 million since their promotion to build a squad that’s competitive in the Premier League.

To reach this level, Newcastle could need four or five new players, especially now that star striker Callum Wilson is injured.

But even that might not be enough. The statistical model assumes that all these new players will instantly gel, whereas in reality, bringing in half a team in January would probably lead to weeks of disjointed performances. If the new players don’t hit the required level until the end of February then it might already be too late for Newcastle.

To give Eddie Howe the best chance of keeping his side in the Premier League, he needs the rest of Newcastle’s new signings to arrive as soon as possible so that he has the full winter break to get them integrated with the squad, especially as Newcastle could do with a whole new defense. If the aim of the signings in January is to avoid relegation, then it might be worth paying a bit more just to get them over the line faster.

January signings are usually not that effective as they don’t have a full preseason with their new club, but any European signings this winter will at least have the mini pre-season of the winter break. There are plenty of quality Asian and African players that Newcastle could bring in, with Tifo Football suggesting Rubin Kazan midfielder Hwang In-beom for example, but such signings would have less time on the training ground to get up to speed.

In the past, Newcastle’s local rivals Sunderland used the January window effectively under Sam Allardyce in 2016, with Jan Kirchhoff, Lamine Kone and Wahbi Khazri giving them a much needed boost in their fight against relegation. The players Newcastle can bring in will be of a higher quality than that, but if they don’t arrive until deadline day on January 31st then it could be too late.

Eddie Howe once saved Bournemouth from relegation into the fifth tier of English soccer despite starting the season with a 17-point deduction, but without time to get his ideas across to Newcastle’s new signings, even he might struggle to get them performing in time to avoid the drop.