6. Buy Back Every Geordie In Another Team's Youth Academy
Ross Kinnaird/EMPICS SportIf you're looking for real, long-term, sustainable growth at a football club, developing your own players is the way forward. No more scouting networks, no more transfer fees, no more agents telling you that their client can't make the move unless you throw in a 4 bed detached house for their parents so they can "look after him spiritually", just a production line of quality footballers. Sadly, Newcastle haven't brought one of these quality footballers through into the first team since Gazza and Waddle. Since then we've had Peter Beardsley, Steve Bruce, Alan Shearer, Adam Johnson and Michael Carrick all go elsewhere despite living on the same bus route as the stadium. The best we've managed is Steven Taylor and the late Shola Ameobi - the equivalent of having gourmet sausages in your fridge and still insisting that damp grey pork scratchings are a hearty breakfast. The next crop of emerging talent doesn't look like setting the world alight either, so hiring a big bus for the afternoon, driving to the Youth Academies of every other Premier League side, and begging any prospective talent from North of Yorkshire to return home seems like a solid use of time and money. It's already worked for Colback in a round about sort of way.