Why visit of Newcastle's Saudi owners is being talked about

Howe's ability to outperform clubs with bigger wage bills has been a trademark for much of this time at Newcastle, but his side find themselves below Crystal Palace, Sunderland, Everton, Fulham, Brentford, Bournemouth and Brighton in the table with four games to go.

There is some mitigation.

Newcastle have played 54 matches in all competitions, which is uncharted territory for the group, who reached the last 16 of the Champions League and a third League Cup semi-final in four years.

This drained side have been knocked back by injuries to influential players like captain Bruno Guimaraes at key moments.

Newcastle are also still feeling the effects of a turbulent transfer window last summer.

David Hopkinson and Ross Wilson have since arrived, but the club operated without a chief executive and sporting director during a pivotal trading period.

Newcastle missed out on a host of top transfer targets, including Joao Pedro, Hugo Ekitike, Benjamin Sesko and James Trafford, and have seen little return from a £100m-plus net recruitment drive that Howe was heavily involved in.

Finally, having decided to hold firm for so long, Newcastle ultimately buckled and sold Alexander Isak on deadline day after the striker pushed to join Liverpool for a British record £125m.

Recruitment and infrastructure projects

As intense as last summer was, though, there could be even more activity in the coming months.

Such a rebuild is clearly going to require smart trading given the financial rules in place.

A theory has been put forward externally that Newcastle would benefit from dropping out of Europe as it would enable them to spend up to 85% of their football-related revenue and net profit/loss from player sales under the Premier League's new squad cost regulations, as opposed to the 70% figure for those competing in Uefa's competitions.

However, that is not the view inside St James' Park because Uefa's football earnings rule runs over a three-year period, so those accounts would still have to be submitted to European football's governing body if Newcastle were to qualify the following season.

If Newcastle were to push against the guardrails this summer, they would then be in danger of a breach down the line.

Therefore, the need to raise funds to reinvest is crucial, amid doubts about the futures of Anthony Gordon, Tino Livramento and Sandro Tonali, as the club look to learn lessons from last summer, widen their recruitment network and adopt an even more data-informed approach.

Such a shift to a more strategic trading model will not necessarily come as news to Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), Newcastle's majority owners, whom the club's hierarchy speak to every day.

But Al-Rumayyan's latest visit to the North East feels significant at a time when a number of the PIF's other investments are being scaled back elsewhere.

Senior figures believe the fund remains engaged, with a substantial capital investment in the pipeline.

The current training ground is being expanded - doubling in size in terms of footprint - but the wait continues for an announcement on the identification of a site for a new state-of-the-art base.

Then there is the not so insignificant matter of St James' Park and whether Newcastle expand the stadium or build a new ground in a bid to turbocharge income streams in the long run and bridge a huge revenue gap on the league's highest-earning clubs.

It is not lost on anyone at Newcastle that it is "so important we land this", as chief executive Hopkinson put it a few weeks ago.

Those words could apply to just about every aspect of the club right now.