Newcastle United make 'clear progress' on rivals after £40m Chelsea boost & PSR-busting transfer decision
Newcastle United’s academy has been ranked amongst Premier League and Football League clubs.
After years of neglect under Mike Ashley’s stewardship, Newcastle have invested significantly in the academy since the Saudi-led takeover of the club in October 2021. The Magpies have been able to attract promising young talent such as Alex Murphy, Cathal Heffernan, Trevan Sanusi, Leo Shahar and Travis Hernes in recent seasons.
Newcastle also have Sean Longstaff and Lewis Miley as part of the first-team set up having progressed through the academy. The club also sold arguably one of its best academy products in recent years in Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest for a joint club-record fee of £35million in June.
On the academy front, Newcastle still has plenty of ground to make up with the Under-21s side finishing 22nd out of 26 teams last season. In the Under-18s Premier League, Newcastle finished eighth out of 13 teams in the northern section.
Now, experts at Training Ground Guru, have updated their academy productivity ranking system which assesses and compares academies based on the number of their graduates who made at least one league appearance in the 2023-24 season. Once again, Chelsea lead the way in the academy rankings with an ‘Academy Productivity score of 196.03. Newcastle’s first team features the same number of Chelsea academy graduates as its own with Lewis Hall and Tino Livramento starting their careers with The Blues.
Arsenal sit second with a score of 161.23 while Manchester United are in third with a score of 155.0. Newcastle sit down in 18th with a score of 82.3 - behind the likes of Sheffield United, Charlton Athletic, Middlesbrough and Leeds United.
While there is still work to do at Newcastle, the progress is clear with the club rising nine places from its 2021-22 ranking - more than any other club listed.
The development of Newcastle’s academy will be crucial to the club’s future for many reasons. Producing academy talent has become a more pressing target for clubs amid Financial Fair Play pressures.
Producing players that can be sold for pure profit is key when it comes to battling Profitability and Sustainability Rules. The financial benefits for lower-level clubs are also clear.
Newcastle’s transfers of Livramento and Hall made Chelsea around £40million due to respective sell on and obligation-to-buy clauses. The Magpies also avoided PSR disaster through the sale of Anderson to Forest.
Newcastle has stepped up its academy scouting network over the past year or so with youth scouts now in place across the country.
The club’s head of youth recruitment Paul Midgley said last year: “At the end of the under-14 year, you can recruit nationally, which is going to be a brand new thing for the club.
“At the moment, we are building a national scouting team to go and watch games, identifying high talent and high potential players across the nation with a view to bringing them into our academy system to improve the standard of play and increase the level of individuals within the academy system across the age groups."