Simon Jordan explains big issue facing Newcastle United this summer

Newcastle United missed out on the signing of Victor Munoz last week after Liverpool sniped what looked to be a done deal at the last minute.

Not for the first time in recent history, Newcastle found themselves losing out on a signing to a 'Big Six' club. Last year that was the theme of the summer as we saw the likes of Liam Delap, Bryan Mbeumo, Joao Pedro, and Hugo Ekitike choose one of the Premier League darlings over a move to Newcastle.

Newcastle are a massively ambitious club with CEO David Hopkinson insisting that the club will be challenging for titles by 2030, but there's a disconnect between the ambition and the reality that is yet to be bridged, and things like this serve as a painful reminder.

We have no issue with the ambitions of the club, but you can't come out and make statements like that, and then retreat away from the spotlight and not give fans an update on how the plan is evolving. Newcastle simply cannot compete at the top with the infrastructure in place right now. We need the new training complex; we need the expanded stadium. The training complex will attract players, and the expanded-capacity stadium will provide more revenue to do so.

Simon Jordan delivers a dose of reality to Newcastle United

Unfortunately for Newcastle, they need that high calibre of players to improve fortunes on the pitch to be able to convince players to come here. It's an endless cycle of nonsense. 

Newcastle are fishing in the same waters as the Premier League title-chasers, but they don't have the right bait, and Simon Jordan has delivered a harsh reality check on talkSPORT on this very point, insisting that it's not 'happening again' to Newcastle - they just aren't in a position to compete with the 'legacy clubs' for players, through no fault of their own.

“Well, you make that argument [of it happening again], but you look at the clubs that it's happening to them with. If you made the argument that happened to them with Aston Villa, if you made the argument that happened to them with one of the sides that would finish around Newcastle, you can start to say, well, hang on a second, how is your processes?

“Why are you able to be taken advantage of by players or more importantly, equal-footing clubs? But there is a scenario when you're talking about four, however they've got there, legacy clubs.

“So Newcastle are in a terribly invidious position. We know this, we've rehearsed this discussion 100 times over. They can't break into the top six, despite the protestations of their chief executive [David Hopkinson] rambling on about how they're going to win the league in the next five years with no methodology behind it because they can't get the finances and they can't buy the players and they go around in a circle to get into the top six.

“You need to have big, big ability to spend. They've got the ability to spend, but PSR says, ‘oh no, you can't’. So if it were, as I say, with all due respect to Aston Villa or someone of that ilk, if it were a club that Newcastle were on an equal footing with to some extent in people's minds, I'd say, how's that happening?

“But when Liverpool come in or Man City or even Chelsea, most clubs are at a disadvantage. So that's the nature. We characterise it as it's happening again at Newcastle.”

Newcastle are perhaps too ambitious for their own good right now

It's the same argument that we've been making for a while, and why we feel this approach of looking for lesser-known stars who haven't hit their peak is a good one.

The players we are looking at now are less likely to be snapped up by the big six, who are looking for more instant results and almost need to sign big-name players to satiate fans. 

That's not to say we don't want to see big names at the Toon. Far from it. But we're just not there yet. Those big players may come to us, but we have to accept that we're likely to be a stepping stone for the top players still. That will change in time, but for now, we have to know our role in the food chain.

It's not a flawless plan, but it's a good one

This might sound negative on the surface, but it's not. It's not as immediately exciting, we grant you that, but in the long term, the players we bring in over the next few windows, with the right development plans, could be as valuable as Sandro Tonali and Anthony Gordon, and we've picked them up for a snip.

After we've built them up to this level, we can either cash in for huge profit, which will go towards signing recognised stars, or, with a bit of luck, they will be regarded as stars themselves and will be keen to stay.

As Victor Munoz proved, these signings aren't an open goal by any means, but we expect we have more of a chance of signing the up-and-coming stars than the household names.