Europe in six years? Sounds like a plan to me.
Posted on December 12th, 2010 | 148 Comments |
Pardew’s plan will see us toying with European football with a team of home-grown talent by 2016. It’s a challenge, but why not eh?
I’ve been reading a few comments from a few different sites and I’m rather shocked that people are deeming this ‘plan’ as unambitious.
Why? I mean we are just a newly promoted team with a large following after all. We may well be sitting in 8th place in the league now, but will we end the season there? I’m not so sure on that one as there is still a long way to go, and only last week a lot of the talk was around being involved in a relegation scrap. Has one win against Liverpool now got people hyped up again?
Firstly, let’s have a look at what Pardew said to the Sunday Sun;
“By 2016 I would see us certainly challenging the top seven positions, hopefully producing players from within.”
I would like them to be local lads as well – there is nothing better in a city than having players coming through. I don’t think there have been too many recently and it would be nice to increase that.”
“I saw Barcelona had eight local players in their first team recently – why can’t we? I am not going to compare Newcastle to Barcelona, but Newcastle is a big club.”
“I feel in the short-term I need to look to stabilise and then maybe in the summer look at foundations to go forward.”
I don’t see a lot wrong with that to be honest. I know that five years is a long time in football, but there is nothing to say that we can’t get there sooner. I very much doubt that if we made Europe in three years that the club would turn round and refuse to enter the competition as it doesn’t fit the plan.
I think some perspective is needed, again. The Premier League is a completely different animal to what it was even ten years ago. There is now a settled top five, four of which will go into the Champions League, which takes those teams out of the equation pretty much straight away. That only leaves two european qualification places up for grabs, with about four or five clubs trying to get into them.
It appears that we aren’t going to fluke a european place like we did when we got promoted back in 1993 as, quite simply, the league has changed so much and a lot of teams are capable of competing nowadays. It would also appear that we aren’t going to spend our way there through extravagant transfer spending ala Manchester City, so what other options are there?
I’d like to know your thoughts on this. Is this a lack of ambition? Or is it a plan of sensible progression?
NUFCBlog Author: toonsy
toonsy has written 643 articles on this blog.
Lets get a couple of things straight.
Firstly to do this with young local players is at best optimistic and at worst nearly impossible – Why has only Barcelona done this? Cause it’s fcking hard to do, that’s why!
Secondly – What happens in the meanwhile? What do we do until these local superstars come could? We need investment in the team, will Ashley provide it?
In short I believe this is code for ” Ashley isn’t prepared to put any money into the club so we need to make our own players”.
God I wish it was so easy.