Alex cuts through the noise with three small steps the club can take to prove immediately it's changing for the better
With seventeen points from the last seventeen league games of the 25/26 season, Newcastle United find themselves in desperate need of a transformative transfer window to reverse a direction of travel that if maintained will see the club more likely to battle relegation than compete for Champions League qualification next season.
Such a prolonged poor run of form was not down to injuries, fatigue or even the actions of a delusional ‘ownership group’ last summer who thought they could stand up to player power and earning potential. There are long-standing issues tactically and mentally with the side that have been evident for several seasons.
The popular story of Newcastle United 2024 – 2026 is one by financial constraints imposed on it by a protective ‘cartel’ of rival clubs that have deliberately set Newcastle United back immeasurably. The manger hampered by these restraints, the players dismayed by promises broken and a team moving backwards.
While there is much truth in this, the club has been run ineffectively off the pitch and decisions on the pitch have also caused the damage of two seasons out of three with no European football despite a playing squad expenditure and wage bill that should deliver this comfortably when taking into account the failure of rivals in the same period. Aston Villa’s success in the same period facing the same constraints should shame the PIF.
If the club is to drastically reverse the negative trend of 2024-2026 (a joyously exceptional January – April 2025 excluded) then every single part of the club must work together and recognise that all have played their part in the failure and things must be different at all levels moving forward. As a supporter, there are some key decisions I think we need to see this summer that will not in themselves fix the issues but provide encouragement that the club have learnt from avoidable mistakes and can start to progress as a side once again.
1. Sell Joelinton
By the time next season kicks off Joelinton will be 30. By the end of next season, he will be nearly 31 and in the final year of his contract which is thought to be close to £180,000 per week making him one of the best paid players in the club. The last time Joelinton completed 30 league appearances in a season was 22/23. Since he signed his bumper new contract in April 24 he has scored six league goals with two assists. Eddie Howe rates and trusts the player which is why it is essential to me that Howe and club move him on. While Eddie Howe can rightly point to five disastrous transfer windows 2024-2026 due to PSR restraints, what can be put on him is the refusal to want to sell players to generate funds.
There is simply no way Joelinton will be worth more money to a rival club this time next year as he will be approaching the final year of his contract and be 31 by the time the following season kicks off. A player who misses games every season through muscle injuries is likely to become more injury prone, not less.
The club cannot keep losing players on free transfers. Callum Wilson left on a free despite Howe reportedly refusing to consider selling the player amid Premier League interest at the end of the 2022/3 season. Offers were rejected for Miguel Almirón and Kieran Trippier in early 2024. Sean Longstaff had a fantastic 2022/3 season yet was sold after a difficult 2024/25 season when he’d lost his place in the side. For four guaranteed starters from the fourth best side in England in 22/23; Almirón, Wilson, Trippier and Longstaff went for a combined £21m (source: transfermarkt). This is not a sustainable or sensible way to run a Premier League football club.
It is essential that the club learns its lessons from these failures to get players out of the door when they still have some value. While Joelinton is undoubtedly part of Eddie Howe’s plans and is popular with supporters, none of this should matter to a club ruthlessly trying to change course after two years of regression in terms of the playing squad and on field performance.
Newcastle can’t keep the ball particularly well and struggle to create chances, particularly away from home. Joelinton is the solution to neither of these problems. If the club are to pull off a remarkable transfer window, they are going to have to sell a player like Joelinton to bring in as much money as they can, while removing a high earner. His sale would signal a new way of doing things by both the club and Eddie Howe. You cannot prosper only trading players you don’t really want to lose.
2.Look to Europe for signings
The Premier League ‘proven’ ideal behind summer 2025 was a disaster. It is hard to look past Eddie Howe for this one as his fall out with Paul Mitchell seems to have been based on a difference of opinion on where the club needed to buy from last summer. The list of Premier League players missed out on was long (although none of them have been a particular success at their other clubs this season, apart from Pedro at Chelsea and maybe Cunha at Man Utd) and the two lads we signed from Forest and Brentford have been nothing short of a disaster.
The Athletic have ranked the best transfer window moves from last summer and only three of the top fourteen transfers were between Premier League clubs. Europe undoubtedly provides more risk for players who have never played in England before, but the damage of last summer (and as much as I like the player, Jacob Ramsey has underwhelmed for £40m) is the ultimate antidote to the idea that buying Premier League players at a premium is the ‘sure thing’ to provide success.
I want to see Howe and the club take some risks on players with a potentially high ceiling. Nick Pope was a good goalkeeper at Burnley who was very good for NUFC 2022 until the shoulder injury in December 2023. He was never going to get a game for a top six rival though. To compete with these sides, we are going to have to outperform them in the transfer market, like we did in 2022.
Pope has been exposed as a player ill-suited for the demands of the modern game and by resting on our laurels with him due to 1.5 good seasons, the team has looked hampered with him in the side. He was a good buy, but ultimately the club finds itself with no good goalkeeping option despite forking out a combined £40m in the past four years on Pope, the Forest keeper and Ramsdale. Hindsight is easy for me writing this four years on, but we’d have been better off looking for a player with a much higher ceiling than Nick Pope who never should have been the long-term plan.
Buying Guimarães carried a huge risk. It’s why he ended up at NUFC. The club must take risks selling and buying. Sometimes they’ll pay off spectacularly (Guimarães) and sometimes they’ll be no good (sadly, Woltemade in Howe’s system). Buying from the Premier League can work in exceptional circumstances, but the maths doesn’t work for us in our position. We are desperate for a transformative summer. That transformation won’t come from other Premier League clubs.
3.New coaching staff to support the manager
Newcastle United had an almost miraculous 2022. Across the calendar year they were the third best team in England behind Liverpool and Manchester City, despite starting the year in 19th place. Despite a superb 2023 and memorable Spring of 2025, I’ve never felt that we’ve been as good as we were in 2022 in those heady post-takeover days. Some of the managers encountered that year and 2023 by Howe and his players were Claudio Ranieri, Roy Hodgson, Sean Dyche, Dean Smith, Steven Gerrard, Ralph Hassenhüttl, Patrick Viera, Bruno Large, Gary O’Neil, Sam Allardyce, Erik Ten Haag, Steve Cooper, Ruben Selles, Jesse March and Christian Stellini.
Football moves fast and I’d argue there is no way any of that list will manage in the Premier League again. What it proves is that football is evolving constantly and new tactics and ways of playing are vital. Since Howe and his coaching staff joined the club, only Mikel Arteta remains in post at the same club. That is testament to the job Howe has done yet also proof that the Premier League is ever changing. Arteta has had several coaches come and go in the same period (some enforced on him by staff leaving to become managers elsewhere).
Eddie Howe needs a fresh tactical voice in his set up. The tactics on display were stale before he made tweaks at Spurs that he has modified since (with very little success).
Under Howe NUFC have been a soft touch away from home against decent opposition for his entire tenure. The club has won three of its last 28 league away games against teams that have finished in the top ten of the league (Rosenior’s Chelsea this season, Forest last season and Villa in Jan 24). As hard as it is in this league to win away from home against the league’s better sides, it is an abysmal record which puts our home form under tremendous pressure. Only Leeds, Burnley and Wolves won fewer away games this season than NUFC.
A new coach to work under Howe is a bare minimum if this is to change. The current set up have overwhelming proved they are not up to setting up a side away from home in the Premier League. If Howe is still the club’s man to lead the fightback, he cannot do it with the current coaching team unchanged.
Alex Hurst