This golden rule was ignored when Newcastle United recruited Matthias Jaissle
· Yahoo Sports
Matthias Jaissle has an outstanding CV but let’s just dig a little bit deeper.
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Newcastle United’s new head coach arrived with a CV that deserved a warm welcome.
Back-to-back Austrian league titles with Red Bull Salzburg.
Consecutive AFC Champions League Elite crowns with Al-Ahli.
He is young, ambitious and keen on attacking football, so it is easy to see why he looked like a natural successor to Eddie Howe.
When the club appointed him, sporting director Ross Wilson described a leadership style and football philosophy “strongly aligned” with Newcastle’s vision. I beg to differ.
A career built on financial muscle?
FC Liefering, 2021. His first senior head-coaching job came at Liefering, Red Bull Salzburg’s feeder club in Austria’s second division. Its revenue was 7.8 times the league average and its wage bill was 4.3 times that of its peers. He had access to facilities, players and finances that the other clubs in the league could only dream of.
Red Bull Salzburg, 2021–23. The gap grew wider. Revenue was 8.7 times the Austrian Bundesliga average, the wage bill was 6.2 times higher than those of domestic rivals, and the club’s income made up 44 per cent of the league’s total. Matthias Jaissle won two league titles and took Salzburg into the Champions League knockout stages, at a club already established as the dominant force in Austrian football.
Al-Ahli. Next came Al-Ahli, one of four clubs majority owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. A squad featuring Riyad Mahrez, Roberto Firmino and Ivan Toney cost around €380 million in transfers across his three seasons. Players of that calibre do not come to clubs in Saudi Arabia without very big wages behind them. Al-Ahli are big spenders, one of the four big spenders in the country.
Al-Hilal, Al-Nassr, Al-Ittihad and Al-Ahli all sit under the PIF umbrella, and their resources dwarf everyone else’s in the division. That makes it a four-club mini league within the league, and the fairest place to judge Jaissle, because the money on each side is broadly similar. Over three seasons, he failed to finish higher than third in a four-team mini league. In one season he finished fifth.
The Asian triumphs, in context.
Two Asian titles in a row is a big achievement. It takes preparation, tactical flexibility and a cool head under pressure. But there is huge disparity in this competition. Al-Ahli’s second title was a hard-fought win: Jaissle’s side beat Machida Zelvia 1-0 after extra time in April 2026, seeing out the closing stages with ten men.
In the 2025 final, Al-Ahli beat Kawasaki Frontale. They outspent the Japanese club on transfers by 12.9 to 1 over the season. A year later, they defended their title against Machida Zelvia, who spent 16.1 times less on transfers. In terms of spending, the equivalent is Real Madrid meeting Preston North End in a final. This summer Real Madrid spent about 14 times as much as Preston.
The trophies show Matthias Jaissle can manage an expensively assembled side. They leave open whether he can outperform clubs with greater financial power.
Why it matters
Newcastle’s revenue of €398.4 million makes them eighth in the Premier League and 17th in Europe, according to the most recent Deloitte report (Published in January 2026 covering the 2024/25 season accounts for all clubs). They want to force their way into the top four or five against clubs with enormous resources and Jaissle has never worked in a league as deep.
Rúben Amorim arrived at Manchester United with a big reputation and a 71% win percentage at Sporting CP across all competitions. His Premier League record when he left was only 32%. He left with his reputation in tatters and his tail between his legs but with a big fat pay cheque to boot. Jaissle’s CV has the same shape: big advantages over domestic rivals, then a move into a league where the gap is far smaller. We should expect the same.
The golden rule is having a manager who can punch above his weight. Newcastle United has money but not enough to compete against those financially above us. The manager needs to outperform the budget. He must make the money stretch further. He needs to do more with less. That is the job at Newcastle. That’s what Eddie Howe did. That’s what Unai Emery is doing. And that’s what Matthias Jaissle has never done. And that’s what the recruitment team missed.
The Newcastle United recruitment team’s mistake was to look at a record of wins and not ask what stood behind them. All of it sits in public data, and in an era when every top club has analysts and data at its fingertips, there is no excuse for missing it.
The decision
Either Matthias Jaissle learns to win without the biggest budget (something he failed to do in three years in Saudi), or he is sacked.
On the data alone, Newcastle United have the wrong man. It is exactly what Manchester United did with Rúben Amorim. Many are comparing him with Amorim, with his tactical inflexibility. That is not the issue. The issue is he has never won anything when he has not got more money than anyone else. By all means, give him a run of games. But have no doubt, he is the wrong man, and he never should have been given the opportunity. History has shown that he does not have the ability to over perform. We cannot let our club fall into the Championship based upon a recruitment error. A mistake has been made, and we need to move on quickly.