When the Saudi PIF takeover of Newcastle was completed in late 2021 the new ownership set about adding age and experience to their newly acquired investment.
By the end of their first January transfer window Kieran Trippier, Chris Wood and Dan Burn, all in their late 20s and early 30s with more than 1,200 professional appearances between them, had done just that.
Younger, highly-rated players in Bruno Guimaraes from Lyon, Real Sociedad’s Alexander Isak and Italy midfielder Sandro Tonali Everton winger Anthony Gordon followed over the next 18 months as Newcastle’s philosophy began to cement to blend quality, experience and potential to gatecrash the Premier League’s big boys.
But while the Toon Army have seen two Champions League campaigns come and go and have won their first silverware in generations, an elusive title race has never materialised.
Instead, after a nightmare summer in 2025, Eddie Howe’s side were forced to swallow the pill of finishing five points off newly-promoted arch-rivals Sunderland last season – and closer to the relegation zone than a Champions League qualifying spot.
The head coach demanded this transfer window was different, and it certainly has been. Under a new recruitment team led by Ross Wilson, Newcastle have been among the busiest players with a month to go before the start of the season and have already completed three signings and are close on a fourth in Monaco’s Aladji Bamba.
That is not the only way things have changed. The incoming quartet have played just 261 professional games between them and Lewis Miley aside, represent the four youngest senior players currently in Howe’s squad for this season.
It is an intentional change.
Where the St James’ Park hierarchy have looked for inspiration on how best to utilise the club’s situation, given PSR constraints and the lure of Premier League rivals, they have found Borussia Dortmund a source of inspiration, after the German side’s work on the likes of Jude Bellingham, Jadon Sancho and Erling Haaland in recent years.
“Newcastle were always looking to bring in younger players by and large, take away the January transfer window immediately after the takeover when they were bringing in players like Dan Burn, Chris Wood and Kieran Trippier,” Sky Sports News’ north east reporter Keith Downie told the Sky Sports Newcastle United summer special podcast.
“But the model’s changed slightly in that they’re now looking at players between the ages of 18 and 24, if they can. And you look at the three players they’ve signed already, they fall within that bracket. And between £20 million and £40 million, that’s the kind of bracket that they’re working on.
“They’re trying to bring in young players with a high ceiling that they can, one, improve at the sale on a profit or two, stay with the club for a long time and continue to excel on the pitch.
“I asked a source at the club whether they were trying to be similar to a Brighton or a Brentford. And they said, no, it’s more like what Borussia Dortmund do.
“That’s no mean feat. Remember the chief executive spoke in March and said they want to be one of the best clubs in Europe by 2030. That’s only in four years’ time. They’re going to have to get this ball rolling quickly.”
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Keith Downie speaks on the ‘mistakes’ in Newcastle’s recruitment in the 2025/26 season summer window and how they aim to restructure financially with the signings they aim to make in 2026/27.
Those lack of top-level minutes for Newcastle’s summer signings become more noteworthy because of the players leaving St James’ Park at the same time. Gordon had racked up almost 200 Premier League games by the time of his departure and Tonali likewise across the English top flight and Serie A.
Should 29-year-old Guimaraes follow, it will leave a chasm of experience in the club’s midfield.
Meanwhile, missing out on the likes of Joao Pedro, Hugo Ekitike and Benjamin Sesko last summer, and Johan Manzambi to Aston Villa this year, has raised questions over Newcastle’s ability to attract those big names – and keep them – has stagnated after the early years of PIF’s ambitious ownership.
“People are starting to accept that players arriving, Isak, Tonali, even Guimaraes, see Newcastle as a stepping stone to them,” explained Downie. “I think when they arrived, they maybe saw it as a potential end point for them.
“And they were promised that Newcastle were going to be up fighting. But as the years have ticked by, four and a half, nearly five years since the takeover, Newcastle aren’t fighting for a title.
“They have won just the one trophy, as great as it was.They’re not hitting those heady heights. So suddenly guys like Gordon, Tonali and Isak are thinking, ‘I’ve been here three or four years now, I want to go and win trophies and I want to be in Europe. I want to be in the Champions League every year.’
“The project hasn’t moved as quickly as the development of the players. And that’s a lot down to how good, how well Eddie Howe has coached them and improved them alongside his coaching staff.
“Manzambi had agreed to come to Newcastle. He had agreed to personal terms and was keen on the move. He just preferred Aston Villa. From what I’m told, that was just because Aston Villa are a Champions League club next season, and Newcastle are not.
“Of course, Newcastle were a Champions League club last summer, and they were missing out on players. But they were missing out to Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester United, more established, bigger-name clubs to players on the continent.”
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It could have been a very different summer for two members of Northern Ireland’s 12-strong boxing team.
Jon McConnell and Kaci Rock will compete in this year’s Commonwealth Games for the first time, but had progressed through the initial auditions for the latest series of Love Island before pulling out because the TV show clashes in timing with the Games.
McConnell, who competed at the recent World Boxing Cup in Brazil, will compete in the light-middleweight division and will face India’s Sumit Sumit on Monday, with Holy Trinity’s Rock in welterweight action against Niue’s Karen Te Ruki Pasene the following day.
Reality TV show Love Island, hosted by Maya Jama, has just completed its 13th series in Mallorca.
“I used to spend a lot of time watching Love Island with the team,” said 23-year-old McConnell.
“It was never really my idea at first, but Kaci mentioned it and said she’d put my name forward as well.
“I got through a few stages of the process but then I got selected for the Commonwealth Games.”
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Carlos Beltrán, Andruw Jones and Jeff Kent will have their plaques added to the gallery at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY this weekend. Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – The Baseball Hall of Fame will add three new plaques to its gallery on Sunday, after Carlos Beltran, Jeff Kent and Andruw Jones take their turns on stage at the Clark Sports Center. The collection will number 354, each with a likeness and a few lines of descriptive text.
Last summer, we explored the oddities of those engraved words for posterity. Now we put you to the test: can you pick the Hall of Famer from the context clues on his plaque?
Spot the pattern. Connect the terms
Find the hidden link between sports terms
Play today’s puzzle
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CHICAGO — “I’m absolutely burnt out from talking to you guys,” Pete Crow-Armstrong told the reporters huddled around his Wrigley Field locker when the Chicago Cubs returned from the All-Star break. “I’m not going to lie.”
For the most part, Crow-Armstrong speaks with a lot of self-awareness and just enough filter. The young center fielder understood the face-of-the-franchise responsibilities when he agreed to a six-year, $115 million contract extension before Opening Day in March. He also mentioned Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani by name, acknowledging his media demands don’t quite rise to their levels.
That passing reference is a reminder that the Cubs could have the best player on the field — on both sides of the ball — for every postseason game they enter this fall. It’s not hyperbole when FanGraphs (6.3) and Baseball Reference (6) both rank Crow-Armstrong as the current major-league leader in wins above replacement.
Judge’s fractured rib is a crucial variable for the New York Yankees’ World Series odds. If Ohtani’s left knee heals in time to allow him to return as a starting pitcher, then the Los Angeles Dodgers will clearly have the best all-around baseball talent on the planet, if not in the sport’s history. Major League Baseball’s postseason format is also widely seen as a crapshoot.
But Crow-Armstrong’s rapid development into a superstar should be factored into the club’s plans for the Aug. 3 trade deadline, because you never know when another spectacular season like this will come around.
Pete Crow-Armstrong was an All-Star again this July. ( Matt Dirksen / Chicago Cubs / Getty Images)
“He’s got to maintain this approach,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said, “but this current approach is exactly what we always hoped he could get to. It just came a lot faster than we thought.”
Hoyer was the general manager of the 2016 World Series team that believes it would not have gathered for a 10-year reunion at Wrigley Field last weekend without the trade-deadline acquisition of Aroldis Chapman, an All-Star closer who would spend only a few months in a Cubs uniform, but would be remembered forever.
As team president, Hoyer executed the sell-off at the 2021 trade deadline that unloaded Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant and Javier Báez for a collection of unproven talent that included Crow-Armstrong, building for a time when the Cubs would again be perennial playoff contenders.
That moment is here.
Even though Baseball Reference gives the Cubs drastically different outlooks for winning the division (2.6 percent) and making the postseason (80.2 percent), the club has the first-rate defense that plays up in October, a big opportunity to upgrade the pitching staff at the trade deadline and a singular performer.
Crow-Armstrong, 24, is the same age Bryant was when he won the 2016 National League MVP award and made the play in Cleveland that ended Game 7 and Chicago’s a 108-year championship drought.
Báez was nearing his 24th birthday when he became a breakout star of the 2016 playoffs, earning co-MVP honors in the NL Championship Series.
In trading fan favorite Báez to the New York Mets, the Cubs received Crow-Armstrong, an electric prospect with natural athleticism, room to grow and a willingness to be coached over the years.
Now with a more selective hitting plan, Crow-Armstrong has more than doubled his walk rate from last season without sacrificing power (21 homers) while further accentuating his speed (25 stolen bases).
“He’s got to maintain this approach,” Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said of Pete Crow-Armstrong, “but this current approach is exactly what we always hoped he could get to.” (Geoff Stellfox / Getty Images)
This is the name in the lineup that the other team circles, the player you have to build the entire game plan around in October, when the margin for error is razor-thin.
“He’s not going to chase the breaking ball away,” Hoyer said. “He’s going to have a disciplined approach. He’s kind of impossible when you get to that place. With the ability to impact on the bases, you can’t pitch around him because it’s an extra-base hit. And if you pitch to him, it might be an extra-base hit. That’s the real beauty, he can get into scoring position so easily. You can’t walk guys like that.”
Crow-Armstrong also continues to play Gold Glove-level defense at a premium position, leading the majors in Statcast’s outs above average and fielding run value.
For perspective, listen to Cubs manager Craig Counsell, who is not exactly excitable or prone to exaggeration.
Now in his 12th season as a major-league manager, Counsell’s frame of reference for Crow-Armstrong also covers his 16 seasons as a major-league player, including the World Series rings he earned with the 1997 Florida Marlins and the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks.
“Offensively, the on-base component of leading off, that’s a big deal,” Counsell said. “He’s on base a ton for some really good hitters behind him. That makes a huge difference. He’s just a threat. He’s a tough, tough at-bat for a pitcher in all ways.
“Defensively, there are just plays that he’s making (that) we’ll probably start to take it for granted a little bit. Nobody else is making those plays. And you’re going to have to watch baseball a long time to find someone who’s going to make those plays. That’s how good it is.”
Pete Crow-Armstrong signed a six-year contract extension ahead of Opening Day. (David Banks / Imagn Images)
The projection systems don’t think the Cubs will catch the Milwaukee Brewers in the NL Central race. Trading for an established starting pitcher and a late-inning reliever (or two) will cost a ton of young talent. Baseball can be so random that there will be no guarantees in the playoffs, even for the mighty Dodgers.
But that uncertainty also creates an opening for a team with solid fundamentals and an MVP candidate in the middle of everything. The how and why behind Crow-Armstrong’s evolution make the Cubs believe this will be more sustainable, that he won’t fall off a late-season cliff.
Standing at his Wrigley Field locker, Crow-Armstrong had a light blue hoodie pulled over his ears and part of his face. Sunglasses and a Cubs hat resting on his head. He noticed when a media member used the word “seamless.”
“Nothing’s seamless about it,” Crow-Armstrong said. “Just a lot of good work, really. I just think it’s a lot of natural growth as a hitter. I’m turning myself into a real hitter. I feel more like a complete hitter, and I’m looking forward to continuing that as we go.”
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