Newcastle United fans should embrace the chaos; the club is doing what it should have been doing all along, and it could make for the most interesting and exciting season in years

A young, forward-thinking manager and a squad full of potential is a thrilling prospect

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“You fear for them, you really do”. A well-worn cliché that pundits will use to express their worries for at least one club at the beginning of every Premier League season, often before a ball has even been kicked in earnest.

This year, it looks like my beloved Newcastle United are chief among the sides attracting fretful glances, based on a summer of high-profile outgoings and much lower-profile arrivals, creating a squad littered with uncertainty and inexperience.

What’s more, head coach and certified club legend Eddie Howe walked away with just three weeks to go before the Premier League’s return and, at the time of writing, his successor is yet to have been formally announced.

Given all of this chaos, it’s easy to see why pundits, fans and casual observers are looking at Newcastle like a giant bin fire that no one’s bothering to pour so much as a glass of water over. Yet, I’m much more excited about this upcoming season than seemingly everyone else.

Firstly, I’m delighted to see Newcastle doing what they should have been doing all along, identifying young, exciting players with potential and bringing them in with development and future profit in mind. It was a method that worked perfectly with Alexander Isak, Sandro Tonali and now Bruno Guimaraes and should never have been abandoned.

Instead, we’re now forced to live with the consequences of last summer’s drastic overspend, which has burdened us with players like Anthony Elanga and Yoane Wissa, who are unlikely to be moved on any time soon, or generate the club any profit at all. All we can do is hope they come good, but there’s little evidence to suggest that’s coming this season. Prove me wrong, lads.

Despite that, we’re now looking at a refreshed squad full of youth and exuberance and, although it’s certainly a risk, a few more arrivals are needed between now and the start of the season. I’m really excited about watching these players grow and create moments to remember in black and white and eventually be disheartened when they leave in big money moves to clubs who are simply better placed to pay what they should be earning.

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Sure, losing the likes of Isak, Guimaraes, Anthony Gordon and Tonali has been painful, but only because those players are success stories of a transfer policy that served us extremely well before it was carelessly dropped. I’d much rather be gutted to lose Bazoumana Toure and Aladji Bamba to bigger sides in years to come, than be praying to see the back of them because their moves haven’t worked out. This is how we should have been doing business all along, and I’m pleased to see it make a return.

Something I'm less keen to see back at Newcastle any time soon are the ridiculous suggestions of competing for titles, or challenging among the top clubs in the world by 2030. Granted, those ideas have been pushed into the public conscience at the Watford Observer before turning his hand to travel writing, with his work appearing in various national UK publications. He has gone from providing matchday commentary for Blyth Spartans to covering FA Cup and Euros finals, as well as interviewing the likes of Claudio Ranieri, Alan Shearer and Glenn Hoddle, among other big names.