Eddie Howe will be handed significant funds to boost his Newcastle squad in the January transfer window as the club’s new owners become increasingly bullish about beating the drop.
The new year is not regarded as the best time to do business but, with the Magpies languishing second-from-bottom in the Premier League table, co-owner Amanda Staveley acknowledged there was no time to waste.
“We are preparing for the January transfer window,” Staveley told the club’s official website. “It’s not a window we would ordinarily want to invest in, because you probably don’t get the right deals, but that’s something that is important at the moment.”
Eddie Howe is not ‘frightened’ of relegation, according to Amanda Staveley (Owen Humphreys/PA)
Staveley said that it had never been a notion to delay the takeover once it got its belated green light from the Premier League, in order to better establish the club’s likely fate this season after the hectic festive programme.
Instead her PIF consortium swiftly homed in on Howe, whose remarkable success in leading Bournemouth from the bottom of the Football League into the top flight convinced them that the 43-year-old was the right man for the job.
Staveley added: “It would have been an easy decision for us not to buy the club, just to wait until post-Christmas and post the January window and see where the club was in the league, and then make the acquisition.
“That would have been the safe investment bet, but we didn’t do that, we decided if we didn’t do it now it wasn’t going to happen and we had to take that risk.
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“We took that risk because the club was sitting in 19th position at the time and Eddie took the job knowing there was that risk.
“We had to have someone leading the club who was not frightened of relegation.
