5 Reasons Why Andy Carroll’s Return Would Be Good For Newcastle (And 5 Why It Wouldn’t)

1. Opportunity Cost

As with all signings, by acquiring one player, the chances of recruiting other players become reduced (unless you're Manchester City and transfer budgets are infinite of course). Newcastle's current squad has a lot of holes and walked a tightrope to stay in the Premier League at the end of the 2014-15 season. Signing Carroll resolves one issue up front but it would also pose a number of other questions as to what the club do next. What would the club do in terms of their others targets, for example Charlie Austin, Bas Dost and Saido Berahino? If the transfer kitty is £30 million or even £40 million to spend, then £10 million on Carroll takes a significant chunk of that budget. If you assume any of those other three are likely to cost £15 million each, essentially the club will have spent more than half of its budget on forwards if they get Carroll and one of the others. This would mean that Newcastle would have to be very careful with their spending elsewhere and may need to look for bargain-bin players to plug gaps elsewhere. The other option would be to make Carroll the main big-money signing to lead the line. That means the younger goalscorers would be left for another window - giving rivals the jump on them. It would of course mean that Newcastle could improve the centre-half situation and could buy players to shore up the squad elsewhere. Essentially what the club hierarchy need to do is decide if they think there is a realistic prospect of a foursome of Carroll, Perez, Cisse and Riviere at St James' Park next season.