Newcastle United hope to emulate Borussia Dortmund - Keith Downie

Newcastle United have embarked upon a new era in the transfer market, and it seems they've set their sights high.

So far this summer, Newcastle have bought four new players following the announcement of Aladji Bamba, and of the four, three are aged 20 and one is 18.

With all due respect to the new guys, none of them were 'household names', but there's still an excited buzz around their arrivals based on reputation and the promise they bring with them.

It's a far cry from last summer when Newcastle were pursuing players who were already established in the Premier League and were getting shown up at every turn. Even when we did manage to land a player, we were getting fleeced.

Newcastle want to employ the Borussia Dortmund model

In his latest video on YouTube, Sky Sports reporter Keith Downie has said that the new model is to find young players who are flying under the radar to develop and sell for a huge profit.

However, Downie claims that club sources have told him that the intention isn't to emulate Brighton and Brentford, who operate in a similar way, but rather Borussia Dortmund.

"I think Newcastle have looked at it and, you know, until they get their commercial revenues at the club up there alongside the likes of Spurs and Arsenal and Chelsea and Man City and Liverpool, they're going to have to do things differently. They're going to have to do it like this. 

"I'm told from within the club that although it's similar to what we see at Brighton and Brentford, the model is Borussia Dortmund. They want to bring young players in, sell them on at a profit, develop them, but also try and still compete for honours at the top, and you know near the top of the table. 

"That's going to be the difficult bit. It's easier said than done and that is going to be the challenge. There's a lot of pressure to to do that because bringing young players in it's there's a lot of pressure, especially at a club like Newcastle."

NUFC are asking for patience - do we have it?

That's certainly a lofty ambition, but it's one that makes sense. However, our question is: how will the fans react to this change?

It inevitably means that things are going to slow down in terms of progress. While we're not quite at that doom-and-gloom stage of expecting to be in a relegation battle next season, we'd be amazed if we're challenging for Europe.

It may be a couple of seasons before we're back up at that end of the table and mounting a serious challenge for the Champions League, but if the club sticks with this approach, we're okay with it. Each season these young players will get better, and the squad will naturally get stronger. 

Even if we sell one or two each summer, we'll make a hefty profit and get two to four replacements. Each sale should allow us to bring in twice as many as we let go until eventually, our revenues are up to the Septic Six levels, and we don't have to sell any more. That's when the project will start to deliver.

Is it what we were hoping for in 2021? Far, far from it. But we should still get there in the end in spite of all the setbacks and the regulations