Graham Carr - The man our hopes are pinned on?

It looks as though the big spending days at Newcastle are well and truly in the past these days.

It will be some time before I envisage us buying another Michael Owen type signing, and before people say that 's a good thing, I'm referring more to the fee paid for the player, not what the player himself actually brings to the team, which in Owen's case wasn't a great deal!

Basically what we are witnessing is a change in our transfer strategy. Gone are the days of us buying our stars. Instead the club are going to focus on making them. That was their stated policy after all.

There are good and bad sides to that of course. Financially it makes very good sense to grow your own players, but then you have to try and keep hold of those players if you want to grow as a club. If you keep selling them then you will need players to replace them, and finding those players in a competitive environment is not an easy job when you have a clutch of clubs all trying to do the same thing.

Step forward Graham Carr, who is the man who is at least partially charged with finding these relatively unheard of, cheaper, up and coming players.

Carr is apparently highly thought of at the club and has a good record as a scout. He was the man who identified Hatem Ben Arfa and recommended him as a signing. He was also partially responsible for the Cheik Tiote deal. Those two players are what I am personally hoping for more of over the summer.

It's looks like most of our scouting activity is being conducted over in France and Holland, which is incidentally where Ben Arfa and Tiote came from respectively. More of the same will do nicely thank you!

Generally speaking you get what you pay for, but there are exceptions to the rule. What is important though is that the necessary homework is carried out on any new arrivals. Scouting is something that we haven't done for some time, not properly anyway, so it's nice to see that the club are putting work in to identifying players for us to sign.

A lot of hope is being pinned on the ability of Graham Carr, but he is just a small part of identifying players and bringing them to the club. However, his small part of the process is arguably the most important part of the lot.

Fingers crossed he can deliver the goods!