‘That’s the difference’ – Pundit makes ‘world-class’ claim about Spurs and Newcastle 

Kieron Dyer has claimed that Newcastle, unlike Tottenham, would be able to sign world-class players following their Saudi-led takeover.

There is a lot of excitement in the North East after the Saudi-led consortium purchased Newcastle from Mike Ashley for £305m, with the new ownership promising fans that the club will be competing for major honours in the future. 

However, the Magpies were brought back down to earth on Sunday as they were outclassed by Tottenham, who emerged 3-2 winners from St James’ Park.

The match showed that Newcastle still have quite a long way to go to catch up with the likes of Spurs, let alone compete for the Premier League title. However, Dyer believes that is only a matter of time before Newcastle overtake Tottenham. 

The former Magpies midfielder insisted that Tottenham will struggle to keep pace with Newcastle if the North London club continue to sign players with potential, as there are no guarantees regarding how players would develop.

Dyer told Sky Sports (17/10/21 at 15:10 pm): “When you were talking about Tottenham there by saying, ‘they haven’t gone on to the next step’.

“Tottenham buy players with potential and try to maximise that potential.

“Potential, people don’t maximise their potential. Newcastle can go out, when they have got the foundations in place and buy world-class players. 

“That’s the difference between Tottenham and Newcastle now.”

Spurs Web Opinion 

There are a couple of things wrong with Dyer’s comments here. Firstly, if you look at the three world-class players in Tottenham’s squad (Kane, Son and Lloris), none of them were considered ‘world class’ when they arrived (or came through the ranks in Kane’s case).

The same is true of the likes of Sadio Mane, Kevin De Bryne, Mohamed Salah, Wilfred Ndidi and countless other players in the Premier League, who are now considered ‘world class’.

So, it is not just as easy as buying finished products as we also regularly see big-money flops like Timo Werner. So, the quality of the recruitment is as important as the financial muscle of the owners.

Secondly, with FFP now being in place and clubs not allowed to artificially inflate their revenue with fake sponsorship deals, Newcastle will not simply be able to keep spending £200m every transfer window like City did.

They have to build much more steadily and it will likely take them three to five years (at best) before they can even push for the top four.

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