While many have seen our transfer business last summer as something of a disaster, Ed Cole argues that signings like Lewis Hall point the way forward to success. The era of big money vanity signings should be consigned to history.

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It hasn’t been a great few weeks for football purists. FA Cup replays were consigned to the history books, the greasy tentacles of VAR denied one of greatest all-time FA cup moments for Coventry against Man Utd at Wembley, while at the opposite end of the pyramid Gateshead FC were dealt the cruelest of blows by their own council – denying them the required length of lease on their stadium and blocking their potential return to the football league.

Meanwhile, the lingering odour of regulatory disputes only seems to permeate week after week. The decision to create a spending cap anchored to the earnings of the least wealthy Premier League club seems to resemble progress of sorts, but it will do little to dissuade fans that the majority of decisions being made at the top of the game are done so with the priority of protecting the wealthy, and shafting the fans. We are becoming far too used to seeing football being less of a sport and more a practice in clever accounting and legal loophole navigation (with the identity of this seasons relegated teams still just as likely to be discovered in the courtroom as on the pitch).

Fans no longer wonder if the sport we love will soon become unrecognisable – but instead ask ourselves at what point it became so. Never before has the old adage felt more appropriate: game’s gone.

Given the above, it’s relatively easy to understand why optimism isn’t very fashionable in football, especially these days and especially across the North East. When looking specifically at the changes to PSR and associated party sponsorship, it isn’t at all controversial to state that many of the recent regulatory tweaks have been brought about to stem the growth of clubs like the post-takeover Newcastle United, and already enough has been done to ensure we (nor anyone else) will ever recreate the meteoric trajectory of Manchester City between 2008 and 2012. Turns out that when Martin Tyler screamed ‘I swear you’ll never see anything like this ever again’ after *that* Aguero goal, he was 100% right.

However, despite many other clubs in the league being being hell bent on sabotaging the road in front of United, there is still plenty of cause for optimism when regarding the future ahead of the club. Call me Ian Dury, but I genuinely believe that despite the ever-bleakening landscape of modern football, there is good evidence that the club are navigating these choppy waters in the commendable fashion – by keeping their eyes glued to that horizon and sticking to the long term plan. At least when it comes to transfer dealings. The evidence for this? Among other things, the signing of Lewis Hall.

The constant drizzle of April showers has done little to mask the distant sound of the transfer rumour mill creaking into action, as another long summer of speculation, scrutiny and spurious links begins to take shape. But what do transfer windows look like in this strange new football world? And what kind of players should we be pursuing to ensure that we not only continue to improve the squad, but also stay on the windy side of the law?

Last summer showed us that the constant shifting of circumstances make transfer windows more difficult than ever to predict. The days of identifying a weak spot in the team and finding a suitable player to fill that gap might not be completely behind us, but long-term thinking combined with minimal financial wiggle room means the the process of pursuing of players is moving further outside the box. After signing Minteh, Tonali, Livramento and Barnes, United had reached the end of their financial rope, and despite the common consensus that we were still in need of a left back (and ongoing links to Arsenal’s Kieran Tierney) there were noises coming from inside the club that we were closed for business.

It was at this point that the availability of Hall was brought to the club’s attention. Not only were Chelsea willing to part with the young left-back, but also they were willing to structure a deal that meant that NUFC wouldn’t pay the full price (around £30 million) until the following summer. The fact that Hall was young, had pedigree, Premier League experience and a meteoric rise through Chelsea’s prestigious youth system, the fact that he was a childhood United fan and was versatile, and most of all the fact that we could buy him despite the coffers being empty – all of these were the main reasons we made the signing. He ticked so many boxes in player profile it can be surely be argued that it would’ve been crazy not to sign him, even if his predominant position on the pitch wasn’t even the one we were looking to fill at that time.

All of which indicates a policy regarding transfers and long-term thinking that is quite simply alien to fans on Tyneside. I can safely say that as I hurtle at breakneck speed towards my late-30s, I’ve never seen this kind of thinking at our club in my life – not even at the times of Robson or Keegan. Players were always signed for now, success was always seen as immediately necessary, little care was given to long term planning or joined-up thought, leaving us with the likes Albert Luque, Jean-Alain Boumsong and (shudder) Michael Owen – to name but a few.

Plenty of clubs still follow this Hollywood model, chasing big names for enormous fees to try and appease fans and find the perfect inverted right-winger or ‘number 6’. It all seems so desperate to me, especially in times when the off-field conversation is fixated on forensic spending and credible accounting. We all know we can’t pay £115 million for Caicedo or £80 million for Antony. Surely the time has come to agree that actually, we don’t even want to.

The amount spent by Chelsea and Man U on signings is not only damaging to their immediate financial situation, it also contributes to the continuing commodification of football as a whole, where the process of signing a player becomes more fraught than performances on the pitch, and where the billions changing hands only continues to entrench the isolation of the charlatans at the top from the paying customer.

Far from being disappointed that we aren’t behaving like the new Man City, fans should be excited that we are looking for new ways to be successful in the game. Such a model means that the most exciting and important signings this summer are actually already at the club, with a years worth of bedding-in and knowledge of the team already under their belts. Thinking long term, investing in youth, finding creative ways to navigate ever-changing financial regulations specifically designed to hamper us – these are all reasons to be cheerful. Football has changed but United are changing with it. And there’s every reason to believe that compared to our direct rivals, we may already be ahead of the curve.

Ed Cole @edsamuelcole