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Six signings into the window and not one of them had kicked a ball in the Premier League. Newcastle United fixed that on Wednesday morning.
The club have agreed a deal worth up to £52m with Manchester City for Nico Gonzalez, ending a summer of exclusively continental recruitment and handing Matthias Jaissle the kind of midfielder he has been asking for since pre-season.
A midfield that keeps emptying
Look at who has left St James' Park in the past few months and the urgency explains itself. Bruno Guimaraes went to Arsenal. Sandro Tonali is at Tottenham. Anthony Gordon and Kieran Trippier are gone too. That is a captain's worth of experience out of the building in a single stretch, and the replacements so far — goalkeepers Lukas Hornicek and Ewen Jaouen, defender Amar Dedic, midfielders Aladji Bamba and Sean Steur, forward Bazoumana Toure — were all bought abroad and mostly bought young.
Jaissle didn't pretend otherwise. "Adjustments need to be done and will be," he told BBC Sport last week. In head-coach language that is a fairly loud request.
What Newcastle are actually getting
Gonzalez is 24 and has only been in England for a season and a half after arriving from Porto. He made 59 appearances in all competitions for City without ever quite becoming a fixture. He is not a marquee name and was never going to be. The numbers underneath the surface are why Newcastle moved.
Among midfielders who played at least 900 minutes in Europe's top five leagues last season, nobody won the ball back high up the pitch more often than he did — 2.13 high turnovers per game. He also finished in the Premier League's top five for line-breaking passes, averaging 12 a match. Win it early, move it forward fast. That is a Jaissle midfielder.
City keep selling midfielders
The Spaniard said not long ago that he "did not want to leave" the Etihad. Then City agreed an £85.6m deal for Lille's Ayyoub Bouaddi, having already spent £116m on Elliot Anderson from Nottingham Forest, and the maths stopped working in his favour. He was an unused substitute on Saturday as City came from behind to beat Bournemouth 2-1 in Enzo Maresca's first Premier League game in charge.
Gonzalez becomes the fourth senior midfielder out of the door this summer, following Bernardo Silva, Rodri and Tijjani Reijnders. Whatever else Maresca inherited, he inherited a rebuild.
Six days left
Newcastle came within seconds of beating Liverpool on the opening weekend with a young side, which was encouraging and also slightly beside the point. Squads that thin get found out by November. Gonzalez would have been out of reach not so long ago; he is available now because City are restocking at the top end. The window shuts on 1 September, and Jaissle still has calls to make.
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