Andy Carroll
Carroll was a top youth player for Newcastle, and the club hope to create many more like him. REUTERS

Newcastle are set to invest £1 million per year into building a youth academy in the north eastern town, with the club claiming that they are beyond the days of making big money signings and being a prominent name in the transfer market.

The Toon have often been known for handing out long contracts worth big money for players; but last summer the side moved towards bringing in young blood, and refused to give stalwarts such as Joey Barton or Kevin Nolan new deals, resulting in the pair leaving the club.

And now, as Newcastle attempt to become more sustainable for the long-term future, Mike Ashley has agreed to invest a further £1 million in their young blood, in the hopes of blooding more players like Andy Carroll and Tim Krul.

"Football generally, at some point, has to take a reality check. You cannot go on paying £34million for a player," Newcastle academy director Joe Joyce told the Journal.

"Barcelona have shown they have a system for producing their own homegrown talent.

"That is not to say that will not come from another country but if you have a system and programme which can identify the player to start with and then produce the player to go on and play for your first team you are doing something right.

"It takes huge investment and that is what the owner has geared up his plan to do.

"He wants to bring in the best young players to produce for the first team is what the club needs to do."

Newcastle plan to take full advantage of the scrapping of the rule allowing Premier League clubs to only recruit players under 16 who live within 60 minutes drive of the team's home ground; often the Toon have been left out of favour with this law, with London clubs being able to take advantage of the more plentiful youth systems in their surrounding areas while Newcastle only had the north-east to contend with.

And Joyce believes that the change in the rule will allow the club to concentrate a lot more on building up their youth.

"We have predominantly recruited from the North East," he explained.

"With this opening of the recruitment network we now will operate on a much bigger scale.

"We need to make sure as a club we have our local area tied up - that we do not lose players. That the attraction of Newcastle to a boy from the North East is the biggest attraction.

"At the same time if there is a boy in another part of the country who we believe, who we have identified as a potential first-team player, we have enough to attract him to the North East."

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