The six players Newcastle will sign once they qualify for the Champions League – according to AI

Newcastle may not have been able to get anything out of this week’s trip to Anfield, but things are still going more or less according to plan for Eddie Howe – they’re currently fifth and have every chance of earning qualification to the Champions League again, especially given that the Premier League is likely to get five places in Europe’s biggest competition next season instead of the more usual four.

But last time Newcastle made it into the top tier of continental competition, they weren’t able to make it stick. So what should Newcastle do in the summer should they make it? We turned to the modern world’s answer to everything, AI, to ask it whether it’s got any suggestions for the club. The results were… a mixed bag.

Defensive reinforcements for Newcastle

Let’s start with some of the algorithm’s more sensible suggestions – it correctly identified that Newcastle are struggling slightly for depth at the back, an issue which is liable to become more acute given suggestions that both Kieran Trippier and Tino Livramento could leave the club at the end of the season.

Two players come top of our robot servant’s suggested shortlist – Bayer Leverkusen duo Edmond Tapsoba and Jeremie Frimpong, who would supposedly cost the club £50m each (the AI actually offered an approximate price range but we’ve taken the top price in every instance, because it’s more dramatic).

Centre-half Tapsoba “offers ball-playing ability and physicality to complement Sven Botman” while hyper-attacking wing-back Frimpong would “add dynamism, allowing Gordon to stay left and replacing Almirón’s output.”

The 3AM Verdict: To be honest, the AI isn’t doing too badly so far, which doesn’t bode well for the future of sports journalism written by actual human beings. £100m for two players is a lot, even in the modern market, and we suspect Tapsoba might be overvalued here, but Frimpong’s electric pace and direct playing style would certainly complement Howe’s system.

£100m more on midfielders

Next up, the AI has noted a “lack of creativity from Howe’s team in midfield”, and decided to spend another £100m fixing it – and to that end, it reckons that Newcastle need to pick up Pedro Gonçalves from Sporting (£45m) and Juventus’ Teun Koopmeiners (£55m).

“Gonçalves can play as a number ten or on the right,” our AI friend notes, providing “midfield creativity beyond Bruno Guimarães and Sandro Tonali”, while adding that “Joelinton’s physicality is vital, but Newcastle need more midfield goals and vision. Koopmeiners offers both.”

There is a bit of an issue with Koopmeiners in that he’s only just moved to Juventus, but given that he’s only scored one Serie A goal for the Old Lady after hitting double figures in both of the last two seasons perhaps they’d be prepared to move him on to St. James’ Park.

The 3AM Verdict: We’d rather have Bryan Mbeumo than Gonçalves, if we’re honest, but the versatile Portuguese attacking player is certainly talented and even though we doubt that Howe will suddenly start playing with a true number ten, the club definitely need a new right winger. Koopmeiners, meanwhile, is a box-to-box midfielder and while not quite as much of a creative force as the AI suggests, he’s definitely got a lot of what Joelinton has combined with an eye for goal and a darting run into the box. That deal we do like.

A right winger and a right mess

So far, those of you who decorate your bedroom walls with pictures of Elon Musk will probably be getting pretty excited about how sensible AI’s work has been so far. Well, allow us to strip away the illusion of artificial competence, because it’s about to say that Newcastle should sign Danny Ings.

Yep, the 32-year-old forward, who would provide “proven Premier League pedigree” who offers “intelligent movement and poacher instincts” at a “bargain” price of just £15m. The game may have moved on since that kind of fee bought you an Alan Shearer, but perhaps not by quite as much as AI thinks. Not that we wish to denigrate a player who has had a very fine career, but he’s inching towards retirement, not the Champions League group stage draw.

To be fair, it does also suggest snapping up PSV’s rapid right winger Johan Bakayoko, too, for £50m, which is apparently the amount of money it thinks all football players not called Danny happen to cost. It notes that Bakayoko’s “pace and productivity could elevate Newcastle’s attack”.

The 3AM Verdict: Bakayoko has been linked in real life and while he’s largely unproven outside of the Netherlands he has pace to burn and can give most left-backs conniptions, so he seems like a solid shout. But if you decide to replace the ageing and injury-prone Callum Wilson as Alexander Isak’s back-up, you probably want to sign someone who doesn’t share quite so many adjectives with the former Bournemouth man.

All told, that’s £265m of suggested players, some of which are sensible – we like the idea of a gung-ho pairing of Bakayoko and Frimpong down the right flank – some of which aren’t too mad even if they’re not all that likely, and one of which is Danny Ings for roughly three times his market value.

So what have we learned? That AI makes too many bizarre mistakes to be considered ready to take over from human beings just yet, that Newcastle need to rebuild the right flank and add depth elsewhere, and that the club’s director of football probably shouldn’t use software to do their scouting. In other words… nothing.