Two years ago, we watched as Newcastle United sputtered through transfer deadline day, attempting — but failing — to sign a striker to replace Andy Carroll, six months after hawking the big Geordie to Liverpool for a cool £35 million.
There was the clearly-doomed, last-minute offer for Bryan Ruiz, complete with a helicopter on standby in London to whisk him away from Fulham's clutches. We all took to Twitter to vent our anger. I wrote that, while the lack of a striker signing wasn't a total disaster in light of the club's other moves that summer, the day summed up Mike Ashley's stewardship of the club.
And that's exactly how I feel two years later, after Newcastle ended another deadline day empty-handed (and without having done anything other than bid for a pair of young players: Watford goalkeeper Jonathan Bond and Caen central midfielder Ngolo Kante).
Emotion tends to get the best of most of us amid the insanity of deadline day. Every fan base wants to see their club make a splash with a last-minute signing. In reality, the current squad, while not tremendously deep and lacking in several areas, looks solid enough to finish comfortably in the middle of the Premier League table.
I felt similarly in 2011, when Newcastle surpassed even the most optimistic expectations with a fifth-place finish. The club didn't land a new No. 9 that summer, but it did sign another striker in Demba Ba, a new midfield focal point in Yohan Cabaye and a promising young fullback in Davide Santon, among others.
This summer, Newcastle streamlined its squad with no Europa League on the horizon and added French striker Loic Remy, who nearly joined United in January, on loan from Queens Park Rangers. Meager spending, yes, but Newcastle did invest significant funds in January with five Frenchmen. The preseason was always going to be more about creating chemistry after a frantic final five months of last season than about overhauling the team.
Newcastle also managed to hang onto a disgruntled Cabaye, whose much-speculated-about transfer to Arsenal never came to fruition. Alan Pardew will no doubt tout this as a major accomplishment to swat away criticism of the club's failure to add attacking reinforcements beyond Remy, and it is legitimately a significant transfer market victory. (Side rant: I am genuinely amused at how Newcastle seems to act as though keeping its better players prevents it from also buying others. It's as if Pardew, Joe Kinnear and Lee Charnley are building force fields around Cabaye and, thus, physically unable to work on incoming deals. Rant over.)
All in all, adding Remy and keeping Cabaye probably amounts to the bare minimum for what Newcastle needed to accomplish this summer. And that's what the club seems to aim for these days.
But that's just the problem, isn't it? Most of us have eyed up Newcastle's squad and concluded that it's capable of a top-10 finish. But look at the rest of the league: The two Manchester clubs, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham remain out of Newcastle's league. Liverpool is reasserting itself as a top-four challenger. Then there's always-tough Everton, the ambitious trio of West Ham, Swansea and Southampton and young-and-improving Aston Villa. And don't forget that Chris Hughton's Norwich spent big this summer.
Other clubs aren't aspiring to the bare minimum. They're pushing for better players and constantly looking to upgrade all over the field. I don't think Ashley can claim his club is doing the same.