Our new CEO has had his say on the training ground:

David Hopkinson on a training ground.

"When you look at the facility you have today, it's probably a seven out of 10. It gets the job done. I don't think we have a lot of world-class talent that say: 'I want to stay here because of the training ground' or 'I want to go to Newcastle because of the training ground'.

"Even with the renovation we're doing, which will make it better, we probably only get to an eight. We don't get to a 10. We can't get to a 10 on the current footprint, which is the reason why we're considering - not considering, planning - a very big investment to go and build a 10.

"If you look at the arms race that training grounds have become - in the Premier League, in football, in North American sports - the players are spending an inordinate amount of time there and the expectations have changed and evolved from simply where we train to: 'Yeah, that's where I drop the kids off because they're being babysat while I'm training' or 'This is where the car is being looked after' and 'This is where I get my haircut'.

"This is what's happened in North American sports, and now there are changing expectations here too of what players are going to want in order to choose to come here or stay. Those are the investments we're going to have to make to get to a world-class level."

This to me says we're going to start spending big in the areas that FFP can't hit us.

No bad thing to really expand the training ground either. Like City have done and you have all ages of Newcastle training together - becomes seamless movement between squads.