Near Misses | Have NUFC missed out on these transfers? June 2023

Did Newcastle United REALLY miss out on these heavily linked players? Were they purely agent-driven links or something more? Plus a short lesson in data...

I don’t know about you, but I’m already feeling transfer window fatigue. The endless cycle of links, claims, counter-links and the non-stop merry-go-round of discussions about how much we can/cannot spend due to FFP are… well, exhausting 🤦‍♂️

Among the constant swirl of names pushed by agents (👋 Chiesa), names pushed as a smokescreen (👋 Barella) or clubs trying to bring other clubs in to create a bidding war (👋 Torres), there are some legitimate links to players that Newcastle probably had some interest in buying. Two such players are Maddison and Szoboszlai.

James Maddison

Two things about Newcastle United’s transfer activity since the takeover are:

1. When they like a player, they’d rather wait than sign someone they’re less certain about

2. Once they set a value for a player, they won’t overpay

In my opinion, when it comes to James Maddison, this summer #2 trumped #1. He was someone that we had been consistently linked with for the best part of 18 months to the point where we reportedly bid 50m last summer.

While that money eventually went on to fund the Isak deal, Newcastle didn’t disappear. This summer they tried again at a reduced price - to reflect Maddison’s contractual situation - and would not be drawn into a bidding war.

Given the world of football wants to use the wealth of our owners as a piggy bank, sticking to their valuations is baked into our transfer strategy. Add to this, suggestions that the player fancied a move to London for personal reasons, I can understand why they walked away.

So did we miss out?

First things first. James Maddison would’ve unquestionably upgraded the Newcastle United squad and starting-11.

Since 2019, he has recorded 25 assists and 36 goals (1 penalty). That places him 10th of for scoring contribution per-90 (0.52) of all Premier League wingers & attacking midfielders in that time. Across more than 10,000 minutes of football, you’d be buying certainty of performance, which is something all managers love.

Despite this, Maddison's most natural role is one that doesn’t really fit Newcastle’s style of play. At Leicester, Maddison was most often deployed as a central attacking midfielder (or a #10 if you prefer) 🔽

While Maddison can also play either wing, he’s not an amazing athlete and there were some very valid question marks of how well he’d take to our 4-3-3, high-pressing system. FWIW - If we’d managed to do this deal, I think we’d have seen Maddison line up on the left handside, allowing him to cut inside and become an outside-of-the-box shooting threat with his favoured right foot.

Anyway, here’s how Maddison’s 🔴 performances last season, compared to Allan Saint-Maximin's 🔵.

Ultimately, Maddison’s ability to deliver a rarely less than 6 out of 10 performance is what powers such a consistent supply of goals and assists season after season. He would’ve offered creative passing and goals that a manager can plan around, something that the boom-or-bust nature of ASM’s performances can make hard.

Maddison’s key passes 🔵 & assists 🔴 22/23

Maddison’s shot map 22/23

So did we miss out? Well somewhat is probably the truth. With a £40m price tag for a player with a year left on his deal and some minor question marks about just how well Maddison would’ve done on one of the wings, I can see why Newcastle may have decided not to fight too hard for a deal. Especially when it looks like a deal for Harvey Barnes - who has EXACTLY the same scoring contribution per-90 (0.52), is cheaper, a natural winger and is a year younger - is looking far easier to complete.

Dominik Szoboszlai

So we move to the second - though less concrete link - of this newsletter. Even before the season in Germany had ended, it was reported that Newcastle held an interest in Dominik Szoboszlai.

In the final few weeks of the season, the player refused to give a straight answer on his future and the details of a release clause magically 🪄 found their way into the public sphere, agents are gonna agent, I guess.

While I’ve no doubt that Newcastle - like most major clubs in Europe looking at attacking reinforcements - will have sent scouts to games and perhaps even held preliminary talks with his agent, I doubt it got much further than that. It’s far more likely that he was AN option rather than THE option, especially once the Tonali deal came to light.

So did we miss out?

As much as I love the player - who was a 🥇 pick for left-winger in my pre-summer transfer thread - Red Bull’s seeming refusal to sell for anything less than the release clause fee made it feel like a bit of a non-starter.

Given our priority going into the summer was to upgrade Longstaff in our central midfield - and that we’ve spent heftily to secure a considerable upgrade there - the leftover pot for a wing-forward was unlikely to stretch to £60m, however much I would’ve liked it to.

Source - https://twitter.com/Edit_Kev/status/1655518304763609089

On a personal note, seeing a team as savvy as Liverpool FC pick him up feels like a bit of a win for the process I went through when making my thread. After toning down the number of turnovers in his game, his elite playmaking qualities and long-range shooting made him ripe for this sort of move. I mean just look at ALL those key passes 🔵 and assists 🔴… 😭

In other news… a lesson on data

So as you might imagine, I’m deep into some research on Harvey Barnes’ game *crosses fingers not to jinx the move* and his data has a valuable lesson about football data and the accuracy of data sets in general.

Tall - or at least not short - players are a part of what the Athletic and other outlets have reported as a part of Newcastle’s recruitment profile this summer. So generally speaking, you’re looking at players the same height as Sean Longstaff (180cm) or Joe Willock (179cm).

If you look on the Official website of the Premier League, Harvey Barnes is listed as 174cm.

But on a bunch of other football databases on the internet, he’s listed as 182cm - which is a fair old difference. Now because I’m more than a bit of a nerd I actually spotted this a few months back and did some research using pre-match line-up photos to work he was probably the taller of the two numbers.

So it was actually dead funny to see this mismatch crop up on Twitter this week. Then watching the Wagatha Christies among the Newcastle fans pester poor Emil Franchi - who you should follow cause he’s dead nice - to reveal his own height because he had a ‘reference photo’ to compare to… God, I love Twitter sometimes 😅

Anyway, the lesson here is that there are ALWAYS mistakes in data, so before you trust it with confidence, learn how it’s collected and where it’s from, otherwise you could be forming opinions and making decisions based on inaccurate information.

Right, that’s enough from me, come and say “Hello” if you’re going to the Gateshead game tomorrow. HWTL ⚫ ⚪

Cheers,
Kev