EPL: 3 things to watch in Newcastle’s 18/19 season

Smart recruitment

Newcastle’s smart recruitment last season was surely one of the reasons why they managed to survive. This season, the club won’t expect that to change.

Newcastle already signed Martin Dubravka permanently from Sparta Praga for £4m, Ki Sung-Yueng on a free transfer from Swansea, and Fabian Schar from Deportivo La Coruna for £3m. Kenedy has also joined Newcastle back on-loan from Chelsea. The Toon have also have been strongly linked with Salomon Rondon, who can join in the next couple of days.

The club have also made a profit with the sales of Chancel Mbemba to Porto — a player who played above from what was expected –together with Aleksandar Mitrovic, who joined Fulham for a sizeable fee of £22m.

So far in the transfer window, Newcastle have managed to improve while keeping their financial stability. Dubravka and Kenedy had a positive impact when both joined last year and having them for another season could be good business from Newcastle. The signing of Ki Sung-Yueng is another interesting shout from the club, considering he made a good partnership with Shelvey when both played at Swansea.

Fabian Schar can be seen as an improvement on Mbemba and considering the club only paid £3m for his services, he could turn out to be a bargain. Schar has shown signs of promise throughout his career and playing under Rafa Benítez can really help to flourish his potential.

The potential arrival of Salomon Rondon fixes Newcastle’s problems up front. At West Bromwich, Rondon had a decent goalscoring tally for a team that doesn’t play the best football. He has scored 24 goals for the Baggies in three seasons. Again, under Rafa and in a more sophisticated style of play, Rondon could use his qualities to become Newcastle’s main attacking threat.