Newcastle United boss Eddie Howe hopes to get his transfer business done as early as possible.
Eddie Howe has warned Newcastle United must act quickly in this summer’s transfer window - or risk missing out on their top targets.
Newcastle entered June last year knowing they needed to sell players in order to comply with Premier League Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR), leading to the sales of Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh to Nottingham Forest and Brighton & Hove Albion, respectively, for a combined £68million.
Now in a healthy financial position - helped by further sales in January as Miguel Almiron re-joined Atlanta United and Lloyd Kelly to Juventus - the Magpies head into the summer intent on bolstering the squad.
Newcastle United aiming to strike early in the summer transfer window
Premier League clubs will be able to recruit from June 1 until June 10 ahead of the FIFA Club World Cup before the window re-opens on June 16 and closes on September 1, and Howe, ideally, would like to see the majority of his business done. Newcastle return for pre-season on July 7.
“I think my mindset's always the same,” Howe said. “When you come to this time of the year, you want to act quickly because usually the best players, the best available options, will move quite quickly. And I think if you're too late to react, you can miss out on potential transfers that really could make the difference.
“I'm sort of of the mindset you need to be ready in every moment, whether that's early, whether that's late or whether that's in the middle. We pride ourselves on identifying our targets quickly, and then we have to act quickly and efficiently as a football club.”
In the Magpies’ last major transfer window in 2023, Newcastle signed Sandro Tonali in time for the start of pre-season before later adding Harvey Barnes, Tino Livramento and Lewis Hall.
The summer prior to that saw United recruit Sven Botman, Nick Pope and Matt Targett ahead of pre-season before bringing in Alexander Isak for a club-record £63m in August.
Howe added: "From a recruitment perspective, definitely, yes, because we knew that we weren't recruiting last summer. It was going to be the opposite so, naturally, that's a different feeling when you're involved in the final decision.
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“Without knowing how the window is going to unfold, you will have lots of positivity at the start and then you see how it goes through the window."
How many signings do Newcastle United plan to make?
Howe has played down the prospect of a squad overhaul but expressed the need to replace the players he has subsequently lost during this challenging financial period.
United’s boss is also taking lessons from the Champions League campaign last season when his squad struggled to cope with the extra games, resulting in an unprecedented amount of injuries.
Asked if he needs to sign four to five players, Howe replied: “I think we'd have to sign players purely to replace the ones we lost. When you go back to January and the summer, we lost some key players that were integral to our squad dynamic, so in a couple of positions we're lighter than we would want to be.
“Of course, learning from two seasons ago, we have the rigours of the Champions League format or European competition format, should I say, and we were counting the cost of that.
“There was no breather for us, there was no reset button. We were stuck in an injury situation that we couldn't escape from, so I would say we'd need to add a bit more depth in certain positions.
“But going to the earlier question, I don't think it's a squad overhaul. It's just we need good players and we need to try and add one or two.”
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