Idiotic or a fair price? Newcastle's Woltemade and the £69m fee

After a frustrating summer, it took Newcastle until close to deadline day to sign a striker.

The football world knew they were trying to replace Liverpool-bound Alexander Isak and were set to have a massive influx of funds - £125m as it turned out.

It was natural that clubs would ask the Magpies for a premium.

£55m for Brentford's Yoane Wissa? No problem.

£69m for Germany international Nick Woltemade? OK.

Woltemade, 23, has started the season well, scoring twice in three Premier League appearances and once in the Champions League, and looks an excellent signing.

So it was therefore a shock this week when Bayern Munich board member and legendary former player Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said Newcastle were "idiots" for parting with £69m for the German striker.

Was he simply sending a barb out of bitterness at missing out on the striker, or commenting out of frustration that the riches of the Premier League are ramping up the prices of emerging talent? We explore these issues.

Rummenigge, a former star forward for Germany who is a supervisory board member at Bayern, considered Stuttgart's demands too high for a player who was playing third-tier football just two years ago with SV Elversberg.

The 23-year-old Woltemade's move to Newcastle followed him scoring 12 times in 28 Bundesliga matches for Stuttgart last season.

He also netted six goals in the Under-21 European Championship, in which Germany lost to England in the final.

Rummenigge said during an interview with Blickpunkt Sport: "I can only congratulate those in Stuttgart for finding - I'll use quotation marks here - an idiot who paid that much money. Because we certainly wouldn't have done that in Munich."

Newcastle boss Eddie Howe defended the club's outlay.

"It's irrelevant, really," the Newcastle head coach said. "The market forces dictate transfer fees – not necessarily any one club.

"We're very pleased to have Nick with us. I think he's started very strongly in what has been a difficult period for him because he's been thrust straight into action with no training time of note with us.

"We're really pleased to have him with us and the transfer fee is absolutely irrelevant."

It is very hard to pinpoint a player's true value.

The bottom line, like anything, is what someone is willing to pay.

So Woltemade is worth what Newcastle paid for him: £69m.

One of the only reference points publicly available in football to assess valuations is the comprehensive database of website Transfermarkt, which provides transfer data for BBC Sport.

Now there is a catch in this case. Woltemade's last valuation €30m (£26.1m) was at the start of June.

What happened next? He had a breakout few months.

His last Transfermarkt valuation came a day after winning his first senior cap with Germany.

He then spearheaded Germany's front line at the Under-21 Euros, winning the Golden Boot and being named in the team of the tournament.

Undoubtedly that would add to his value, but would those exploits add £43m?

Among other players to feature in England's win over Germany at the Euros, Nottingham Forest signed Omari Hutchinson and James McAtee for a combined £67.5m, while Bayer Leverkusen signed Jarell Quansah for £35m from Liverpool.

Woltemade was the seventh most expensive arrival to the Premier League in the summer.

But of the 26 most expensive new signings by top-flight clubs, Woltemade's valuation was the lowest on Transfermarkt.

The same website values striker Nicolas Jackson, signed by Bayern on loan from Chelsea, at €50m (£43.5m). Bayern signed Jackson for a £14.3m loan fee with a conditional obligation to buy for £56.2m.

Wissa, 29, who was signed by Newcastle from Brentford in August, joined Eddie Howe's side for £55m and has a €32m (£27.8m) valuation on the site.

Bayern have only purchased two players for more money than the fee Newcastle paid for Woltemade: Harry Kane (£86.4m) and Lucas Hernandez (£68m).

Bayern have turned to England for a number of their forwards in the past 18 months. Deals for Kane, Michael Olise (£50m) and Luis Diaz (£65.5m) cost a combined £201.9m.

By comparison, Newcastle also signed Anthony Elanga for £55m in the summer, meaning their trio of attacking signings - Woltemade, Wissa and Elanga - cost a combined £179m.

In a record-breaking summer as far as transfer spending is concerned, a huge £3bn was splashed by clubs in the Premier League - which is more than was paid out by those from the Bundesliga, La Liga, Ligue 1 and Serie A combined.

Buoyed by the start of a record £6.7bn four-year domestic TV deal, and the extra revenue generated by newly expanded European club competitions, Premier League clubs spent an unprecedented £3bn.

Premier League champions Liverpool parted with a massive £415m while Spanish champions Barcelona spent just under £24m.

Italian champions Napoli paid out £100m on new players, with Bundesliga winners Bayern spending just under £80m.

Promoted Sunderland had a bigger net spend (£118m) than any club in mainland Europe, apart from Real Madrid.

Serie A were Europe's second-highest spenders at just over £1bn, with the Bundesliga sitting in third at under £800m.

Was this spending power the source of Bayern's frustration, particularly as they lost out to Liverpool on Florian Wirtz as well?

While £69m for a player who had played just 69 top-flight matches prior to this season is a lot of money, there is an element of long-term thinking with the signing of Woltemade.

At 23, the player's best years should be very much ahead of him. The man he has replaced this summer, Isak, is a good blueprint for what Newcastle will hope for from the German.

Aged 22 at the time, Newcastle signed the Sweden international for around £60m in 2022 following a record of 44 goals in 132 appearances for Real Sociedad.

With Newcastle, Isak's goals helped the Magpies to qualify for the Champions League twice in three seasons and win the EFL Cup to end the club's 70-year wait for a major trophy.

After all of that, Isak was sold for £125m, over double the money the club paid for him just three years earlier.

Both on the pitch and in the boardroom, Newcastle will hope to see Woltemade produce a carbon copy of Isak's success.

"Woltemade at Newcastle, they could end up making money on him, because I think they've got him at a good price," said former Crystal Palace striker Clinton Morrison.

"He's a young age, and I think he can be good in the next three or four years where they can make good money on him."

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