Newcastle United CEO Darren Eales and sporting director Paul Mitchell
Newcastle United CEO Darren Eales and sporting director Paul Mitchell
Newcastle United may have ended last summer in profit, but that did not tell the full story. CEO Darren Eales was the first to admit that Newcastle had 'not done a very good job at trading players' in the last decade or so - and the numbers don't lie in that regard.
In the previous three-year PSR cycle, i.e. before last summer, Newcastle averaged £12m profit on disposal. For context, the average of the so-called top six at the time was £156m while even the other 13 clubs generated north of £60m.
Dig deeper and in the nine windows between January, 2020 and January, 2024, just two Newcastle players brought in eight-figure sums - Allan Saint-Maximin and Chris Wood. Only the very real threat of a PSR breach and a points deduction forced Newcastle to act at the 11th hour last summer and the Magpies sold Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh to Nottingham Forest and Brighton respectively. It was rather telling that the pair were among some of the most expensive sales in the club's history.
Newcastle have admittedly started from a lower base, having been in a relegation battle only three years ago, but the black-and-whites have to find a way to bring more money into the club. Further sponsorship deals are one solution - Liverpool's commercial income alone (£275.6m) was greater than Newcastle's overall turnover (£250.3m) in the clubs' last set of accounts - but trading will also be essential moving forward.
This is where Paul Mitchell will come in. After repeatedly stressing that he only played a supporting role during a failure of a window last summer, the spotlight will be on the sporting director in 2025 and how Newcastle trade will go a long way to deciding how the black-and-whites recruit.
"We've got to balance out the aggregate," Mitchell previously admitted. "At the moment, it's like 100 to zero and we've got to find our position in the market where both of them attribute and feed each other because every other club does that.
"Sometimes I think people get a bit confused with 'big clubs don't sell players, they just buy players from the smaller clubs'. Liverpool have a sustainable model and I think there's a lot of good learnings in Liverpool's practices. Even this year, if you look, I don't think they lost a big one, but they did do a [Fabio] Carvalho at £20m and they did do the centre-back [Sepp van den Berg] at £20m. That's still £40m and then you can fund a big one yourself.
"So there has to be a more balanced approach, there has to be a more balanced model and there definitely has to be a more strategic approach here that we haven't had in the last two-and-a-half years."
Liverpool have not just sold fringe players well. Even when Liverpool lost an important figure like Philippe Coutinho, in 2018, the money was smartly reinvested and enabled the club to sign Virgil van Dijk and Alisson.
Virgil van Dijk and Alisson proved transformative signings for Liverpool
Do Newcastle need to sell a key player to go again and strengthen multiple positions? Do the Magpies even have a choice in a PSR world?
In truth, this side should still be faring better than the win, loss, draw outfit they have become, who only seem to raise their game against the big hitters, but this is also an ageing squad which has not been strengthened in the last two windows. Only five teams have had an older average starting age in the Premier League this season and 60% of the players who have featured for Newcastle in the top-flight have been 29 or older.
Come the end of the campaign, Kieran Trippier will be 34; Nick Pope, Dan Burn, Fabian Schar and Callum Wilson will be 33; Miguel Almiron and Jamaal Lascelles will be 31; Jacob Murphy and Emil Krafth will be 30; and back-up goalkeepers Martin Dubravka, Odysseas Vlachodimos, John Ruddy and Mark Gillespie will have a combined age of 138.
It is important to stress that experience will be needed moving forward - a number of the aforementioned players are key figures in the dressing room and will be at the club next season - but it feels like change is nonetheless still coming in 2025. Even Howe has admitted that 'we haven't had a huge turnover of players and that's a slight concern'.
"I think freshness is important in a squad," the Newcastle boss said last week. "I won’t sit here and deny that. There needs to be a certain element of trading in and out to keep the group dynamic new. A new dynamic and a new team always has to form every season.
"Sometimes, the same squad can produce a staleness and a negative product. I think we’re aware of that, but it’s about what we’re able to do rather than, 'I want'. Our want is clear, but it’s what we’re able to do that is the key thing."