Eight of Newcastle's players supported the club growing up and six teams don't have any boyhood fans in their ranks - here is the breakdown
“Newcastle United,” the video was captioned. “It's in your blood.”
There had been some angst among supporters waiting for Lewis Hall's arrival to be officially confirmed. Those feelings drained away as the club released footage of a three-year-old Hall on a stadium tour, and then, 15 years later, his tearful father Colin watching his son hold up a black and white shirt at St James' Park.
“My dad's originally from the city,” Hall says halfway through the signing video. “As soon as me and my brother were born, it was drilled into us that we were Newcastle.”
His loan comes with an obligation to buy for an initial £28million ($35.2m) next summer. Following a disrupted pre-season with Chelsea, Howe said Hall is “some way short of being match-fit” but could make his debut for the club he supported as a boy against Brighton & Hove Albion on Saturday.
Edges are hard to come by in elite football, and usually arrive in the shape of cold analytics and hard facts — high-tech recovery programmes, advanced scouting systems and player-tracking technology.
But edges can be also warm and emotional.
Newcastle have eight boyhood supporters of the club in their first-team squad — more than any other side in the Premier League.
Of those, Dan Burn and Sean Longstaff are regular starters, with six more around the squad as emerging options or wise veterans — Mark Gillespie, Paul Dummett, Jacob Murphy, Elliot Anderson, Lewis Miley and Hall.
Mikel Arteta's Arsenal are next on the Premier League list, with seven of the first-team squad growing up supporting the north London club. Three of those are starters — Oleksandr Zinchenko, William Saliba and Bukayo Saka — with Eddie Nketiah, Emile Smith Rowe and Reiss Nelson also childhood fans. That number will soon be six, with Monaco-bound Folarin Balogun the fifth.
Chelsea also rank highly, with six supporters among their ranks, headlined by captain Reece James and Cobham graduates Armando Broja, Conor Gallagher and Trevoh Chalobah — though the number also includes Romelu Lukaku, who grew up supporting the team in Belgium, but is off to Roma.
Obviously, some allegiances are contested — there are players who grew up supporting one team before joining an academy at eight years old and switching — and The Athletic has generally counted them as fans in those situations.
There are plenty of other factors that influence this table. So-called “big clubs” are far more likely to be represented due to the sheer number of fans they have globally — though, as a counter-balance, their quality may mean it is harder for a local player to get into the first-team squad.
Sir Alex Ferguson famously strived to have Manchester-born players in the first team. When Ange Postecoglou was at Celtic, he relied on local players to run the dressing room. “I still don't know what our dressing room at Lennoxtown looks like, I don't go in there, because that's Callum McGregor's domain,” said Postecoglou.
“We try, we try,” Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp has said. “We want to be the spot where everybody with a Scouse soul wants to play. The dream is — and it will not happen in the next five years, but maybe in 10 years — to have a team full of Scousers. Why not?”
If there were two players of equal talent, Klopp has said he would opt for the local one.
Remember those warm, fluffy, and emotional edges? Well, the cold and hard edges can come in useful too — it goes without saying that not every childhood fan can play for the club, as much as Howe might want the personality of 11 Dan Burns in his Newcastle starting line-up. Instead, rigorous recruitment, character references and clear tactical instructions are vital to ensure they contribute to the first-team squad.
Yes, it might be in the blood — but it must be in the brain too. It is only when they come together that a club can create a body of success.