Why Sven Botman is the latest victim of Newcastle’s cycle of doom
Newcastle United’s difficult second album under Saudi Arabian ownership is only getting tougher. Sven Botman is the next victim of a sprawling injury crisis, potentially unavailable until 2025 due to knee surgery, one of eight Newcastle players currently ruled out. At points this season that number has been 13, almost half their first-team squad.
The Magpies have lost more days to injury than any other Premier League side this season, a figure approaching 1400 and continuing to skyrocket.
In part, some of this should have been better predicted and perhaps better prepared for. Newcastle hadn’t played any European football in 11 years and suddenly had to navigate the toughest pool in the Champions League group stage, meaning they have played 41 competitive games since mid August.
They lost star summer signing Sandro Tonali to a 10-month ban for breaching Italian betting regulations, and operated bizarrely in the transfer market around that. They loaned young Chelsea left-back Lewis Hall and committed to pay £28.5m this summer, but he has played just 104 Premier League minutes.
They spent £35m on Tino Livramento, who has had to shift positions to impress behind club captain Kieran Trippier in their only position of real depth. Harvey Barnes’ £38m move being blighted by injury has not helped either.
Newcastle appeared set on a crash course for greatness after finishing fourth in Eddie Howe’s first full season, yet should have realised their foundations were not so much poorly built as non-existent.
Botman’s injury has put the club up for greater scrutiny too. He first suffered an ACL tear last September, then played two games without realising. Specialists could not agree whether it was a total rupture or not, and he believed he could continue without surgery. He even went as far to say he believed he had made the “right choice” in not following the surgical route, which was always going to end with a nine-month absence.
Whether he should already be five months into his recovery is a question for another day, but there are points over the past few months the club would have struggled to cope without him, even if his injury has clearly impacted his performances.
But Botman is just the next victim in an all-too-familiar cycle of doom at Newcastle. We’ve seen it at clubs attempting to break into the Big Six time and again.
First, an ambitious club invests in better players and a better manager. Performances then improve, and results with them. All of a sudden, they’re in the nosebleeds, touring European capitals and enjoying heady cup runs. A 42-game season is stretched to 50-plus.
The players who fuelled the climb are stretched further and further until they snap, because rather than fill your squad with capable bodies the club hierarchy believed quality took priority over quantity. Surely they won’t all get injured?
Performances decline, and results with them. It’s March, you’re out of Europe and both cups, and a return to mid-table apathy appears inevitable.
It’s the next step that varies, and this is perhaps where Newcastle will feel particularly hard done by. Some will accept a return to normality, others will continue to fall. But clubs like Newcastle, who are financially capable of ensuring they rise again, will normally then work to fill in the requisite gaps, and go again.
Except the Magpies are in no position to do this. They are currently at risk of breaching Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR) and incurring a points deduction, needing to sell to buy this summer. The chances of expanding their squad with both quality and quantity are slim, but they will try where they can.
And so the cycle starts again, with a few new faces and potentially a new manager if their downturn does not improve soon. Until the financial regulations change, there is little chance of escaping this miserable sequence. Botman was not its first victim, and he certainly won’t be the last.
