Steve McClaren is cautiously optimistic Georginio Wijnaldum will be a Newcastle United player by the time the squad departs for a pre-season tour of the United States this weekend.
The club are in advanced negotiations with the PSV Eindhoven midfielder, 24, and remain hopeful he will shortly complete a transfer believed to be in the region of £12m.
“We’re close to making our first signings,” said McClaren, who hopes to welcome up to five new recruits, the majority in the £10m-plus price bracket, by the end of August. “Believe me, there is a massive willingness from the club to spend. I’ve come in and looked at the plan, looked at the calibre of players we’re targeting and said ‘wow’.”
It was the first time the former England coach had spoken to the majority of the north-east media since the farcical press conference which marked his arrival at St James’ Park last month when, at the insistence of the club, McClaren spoke to only one national newspaper, the Daily Mirror, which has been discussing a so-called “preferred media partnership” arrangement with Newcastle.
Whatever the outcome of those negotiations, McClaren has subsequently made it clear to Mike Ashley, Newcastle’s owner, and Lee Charnley, the managing director, that excluding the wider media access to the club would be a retrograde step.
Acutely aware the relationship between Newcastle and many of their supporters has suffered several severe fractures in recent seasons, the 54-year-old feels open communication with journalists can help begin the process of reconnecting those supporters with the team.
Accordingly, he invited north-east-based reporters to lunch at the training ground on Thursday to shed some light on Ashley’s latest, newly ambitious, blueprint.
“We’ve talked a lot about the next three transfer windows being huge, massive, for us,” McClaren said. “Let’s make sure we get the right players. If we do, then, in a year’s time – after the third window – we should have a damn good team and the squad should be on a different level to where we are now. That’s purely because we’re looking at players above a certain [price] bracket.
“We’ve put our objectives on the line and Mike Ashley has said: ‘Go on, fulfil it’. We’re looking for a calibre of player to improve what we’ve got. But when you go £10m-plus – to Europa League and Champions League players at top clubs – competition is high.
“So, no, I’m not in the least frustrated at the length of time it’s taking to get the first player in. Sometimes the right ones take a little bit of extra time. And we need to get the right ones.
“We have got one or two positions we need to fill desperately, so we might need to buy about four or five players this window. That would be great. I think everybody would be happy if we could do that.”
A big part of McClaren’s remit is getting more out of what was widely perceived as an under-achieving squad last season. Significantly, discipline has already been tightened appreciably, with two players sent home for minor transgressions in recent days as he and staff strive to implement a “no excuses” culture.
Unusually among managers – or head coaches – he has a seat on Newcastle’s board. So is he more a coach or director? “A bit of both,” said McClaren, who has not abandoned hope of signing Charlie Austin from QPR. “But the majority of my time – 90 per cent – will be spent on the training field. That’s the job, improving, coaching the players, getting them organised, getting them fit and also helping with recruitment.”
He will be assisted by Ian Cathro, the former Valencia No2. For a man so young – he celebrates his 29th birthday on Saturday – Cathro demonstrated extraordinary poise and assurance as he put first-teamers, including Moussa Sissoko and Fabricio Coloccini, through their training ground paces on Thursday.
“We want to give the players a chance to enjoy it here,” said McClaren. “But we also want to give them a job to do.”
