Newcastle United’s squad has voted a new player into the player leadership group.
Following five years at Newcastle, Wilson departed as a free agent in the summer and joined fellow Premier League side West Ham United. That freed up a space in the Magpies’ six-man player leadership group ahead of the 2025-26 season.
Nick Pope voted into Newcastle United’s player leadership group
And joining the group is goalkeeper Nick Pope, which was confirmed by Trippier in his programme notes ahead of Tuesday’s Champions League win over Benfica.
Trippier wrote: “Recently, we welcomed Nick Pope into the leadership group. The boys voted on it, and Nick’s a great addition. He was already a leader in the dressing room; he brings a lot of banter but has good opinions on what the team needs, so he’ll bring a lot to the party.
“There are six of us in the leadership group now, but the squad is so determined to work well and do well that they make our jobs easy.”
Nick Pope into his fourth season at Newcastle United
Pope is into his fourth season at Newcastle after joining from Burnley in the summer of 2022.
Making over 100 appearances in that time, the 33-year-old has helped the club to end its 70-year domestic trophy drought by winning the Carabao Cup in March and qualify for the Champions League twice in three seasons.
This week, Pope confirmed he had extended his contract at St James’ Park until 2027 following recent reports.
Speaking ahead of the Benfica game, Pope said: “Tough to say because I signed that in July 2023! So I was really happy about it then and yeah, as I say, my contract's up in July 2027. But yeah, of course, I look forward to spending as long as I can here.
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“The club is sort of ever evolving, every transfer window, every few months, whether that's players, new bits around the training ground, just ourselves as a team, I think we've evolved and evolved over that time. And yeah, it's been great to be a part of it.
“You want to be part of it moving forward, really feel like we've got that first trophy under our belt now and we qualified for the Champions League twice and you're kind of looking to do that back to back.”
Nick Pope heavily praised after Newcastle United’s win over Benfica
A good week for Pope got better on Tuesday night as he helped the Magpies to a 3-0 win over Jose Mourinho’s Benfica.
Anthony Gordon gave Newcastle the lead in the first-half before Pope’s incredible 65-yard throw set Harvey Barnes in behind the visitors’ defence for 2-0. Barnes then added a third soon after.
“It's a thing of beauty,” said Eddie Howe. “We needed that second goal.
“We've been working on, not necessarily that throw with Nick, but certain parts of his distribution to make us more efficient distribution of goalkeepers these days is so important.
“But that was a sort of spontaneous moment and Harvey finished it brilliantly. So, delighted for both players.”
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