The lack of ‘Hollywood’ behaviour since the Saudi takeover of Newcastle United has shocked and surprised me.
I fully expected to see money being thrown about like confetti, I expected glamour, I expected Amanda Staveley on the pitch every few minutes with a scarf around her neck and seeing the Saudis in the stands like some kind of Politburo.
But instead of all that I’m seeing what looks to be a fully-functioning football club and I can’t help but doff my cap at the Toon’s newish owners for that. The team has been waiting for years to have some money injected and to build real forward momentum.
And the way the Saudis have worked with supporters groups appears to be straight out of the ‘How To Get Punters Onside 101’ manual, with the flags and the Tifo I’m seeing inside St James’ Park.
It’s as if they fancy trying to make it look like the Bernabeu at its best.
Across the squad, they have bought players who are hard-working, diligent, 7/10 or 8/10 types.
They’re Steady Eddies on the whole who can give talents such as Allan Saint-Maximin the platform on any given day to be 9/10 or 10/10 if he wants to be, which he did against Manchester City.
Where will Newcastle finish this season? Have your say in the comments section
Naturally, after the performance last weekend against the defending champions, some supporters are dreaming that Europe could even be on the cards this season.
I’m not so sure about that. But I do agree with Alan Shearer’s claim that they could well be the best of the rest this season.
The trouble for the Toon with anything above that is that you’re looking at an almost locked-in top four, then Arsenal and Manchester United, and I can still see a Leicester or Wolves claiming seventh.
So eighth would be very good for Eddie Howe and his men, and anything north of that would be exceptional.
If they were to finish fifth then Howe would deserve as many plaudits as he was given brickbats the season he played his part in Bournemouth going down.
What will be interesting now is to see how the squad reacts to the £58million-odd arrival of young Sweden striker Alexander Isak.
That kind of sum feels like Newcastle’s first real peep over the fence at a big-spending future and those sorts of signings can go one way or the other in terms of inspiring or being problematic.
At Nottingham Forest, I can see the players who helped the club get to the Premier League being frustrated at the sums being earned by such as Jesse Lingard and Morgan Gibbs-White if they don’t play well. But at Newcastle, I suspect it will go the other way with lads saying, ‘We’d better pull our tripe out or else we won’t be here when we are dining at the top table’.
A lot of us expected to see cash being splashed at Newcastle but there appears to be a feeling of, ‘Let’s try to do it in a classy way, we’ve had a long wait so we can do things right and wait a little bit longer if we have to’.
The big issue for the club in the coming years will be convincing the very best players to relocate to the North East instead of London, Manchester, Liverpool, Paris, Barcelona or Madrid.
Top overseas stars don’t just want a great team and great money, they want a great environment to live in for them and their families, and Newcastle will have to make the city buzz and crackle again for them to be convinced it’s a go-to place.
But qualifying for the Champions League is a big lure for players as well and there’s no reason why, if they keep doing things right, Newcastle won’t be a European staple in the next six or seven years.
