“It’s a dog-eat-dog world,” says Robbie Stockdale.The lead coach of Newcastle United’s under-21s team is a veteran defender of the Premier League and EFL and an experienced coach. His messages to Newcastle youngsters offer empathy but with a clear dose of realism.This summer, academy graduates have had valuable pre-season training time and friendly minutes with the senior squad, yet Newcastle have also invested £120million ($163.7m) in four players aged 20 or under. As exciting as David Hopkinson’s “Newcastle United 2.0” vision is, the criticism levelled by some fans is that spending heavily on youngsters potentially blocks the academy pathway.“The step from under-21s into any first team is the hardest one these lads will ever take,” Stockdale says. “I would see it as a challenge if the first team brought in a player in my position. Can I be better than that player? But making that step up to an elite Premier League environment is very tough. We need to prepare them properly for that.”Stockdale is not the only one who is candid about the landscape.“You have to be at that level,” Steve Harper, Newcastle’s academy director, says. “If there were players ready now for that opportunity within the academy, we wouldn’t need to sign those players. When we’re paying multiple-million pounds for 20-year-olds, you need to realise the expectations are that you need to be ready earlier. You can’t waste a day. It’s a message we consistently repeat.Stockdale says academy players must aim to be better than those signed for the first team (Michelle Mercer/Getty Images)“But 12 to 18 months is a long time in football and we have to make sure the players we have coming through are ready by then. That’s our role. The academy is more important than ever and the financial rules certainly play a part of dictating that.”Following a summer of reset and upheaval at first-team level, this is where the club’s academy fits into “Newcastle United 2.0”.At Whitley Park, Newcastle’s under-21s trudge off on Monday night having lost their opening Premier League 2 match of the season. They took the lead through Vakhtang Salia, an exciting 18-year-old striker, and showed real moments of quality in attack. But Tottenham are worthy winners in the end.“We were really good for half an hour,” Stockdale says afterwards. “Realistically some of the boys have barely played games throughout pre-season due to the first team’s needs. We’ll get stronger.”This is Stockdale’s first full season in charge — he took interim control in January when Adam Lawrence left, before being given the job permanently in March — and the aim is for the 46-year-old to provide stability following a period of coach churn.He has barely had a pre-season with his players due to the first-team requirements — Stockdale also coached the senior group at times — and the under-21s only played two friendlies. He also expects his group of players to be regularly depleted throughout the campaign so that the youngsters can augment the first-team squad.“If we go down to the nuts and bolts of it, there’s only one team that has to win — the first team,” Stockdale says. “That has a knock-on effect whereby the under-21s support the first team. Very rarely do I know my team until 24 hours before a game, sometimes on the day.“We all want to win matches, but there’s a bigger picture. If we get a player making his first-team debut, that’s a massive win for the academy. Sometimes the first team need 11 of my players, so we’re training with just six bodies. But the net effect is far more positive because we’re getting players over for the manager to see regularly.“I see my team as a vehicle to drop each player off at the destination they’re going to end up, whether that’s in our first team or the EFL.”