Newcastle have lost key players and are replacing them with youngsters - how did they get here, and what happens next?
In the space of a single year, Newcastle United have gone from the Champions League to the bottom half of the table, from a growing force of the English game back towards the bottom of the food chain – and the big boys are already picking the carcass clean.
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Anthony Gordon has left for Barcelona and Sandro Tonali has signed for Spurs. Arsenal appear to have successfully unsettled Bruno Guimarães, who has reportedly told Newcastle that he wants to leave. That one down year has done an amazing amount of damage, and now the Magpies are heading into a summer transfer window which has existential implications for the current sporting project.
Newcastle’s summer transfer window could define them for years
Talismanic midfielder Bruno Guimarães could follow Sandro Tonali out of the clubplaceholder image
Talismanic midfielder Bruno Guimarães could follow Sandro Tonali out of the club | Getty Images
Even last summer, when everything suggested that Newcastle were continuing the upward curve described by the first few years of Eddie Howe’s reign and the ownership of the Saudi-led consortium that rapidly expanded both their bank balance and their prospects of success, there were warning signs about the sustainability of everything that the club was achieving.
Newcastle learned, the hard way, that winning the EFL Cup and breaking into the top four didn’t strengthen their position in the transfer market all that much. They were routinely beaten to key signings – as has happened again already this summer with Victor Muñoz – and were bullied into the sale of Alexander Isak.
The judgement made by Newcastle at the time was that they shouldn’t overspend in order to outmuscle teams like Liverpool for transfers, but in the end they wasted so much money on second and third-choice players who underperformed, such as Yoane Wissa and Nick Woltemade, that they would likely have been better off simply coming over the top in the bidding for Hugo Ekitiké.
It’s a lesson that Tottenham Hotspur seem to have been taken on board – rather than feeding off the scraps left behind by the biggest teams towards the end of the window, they’ve outspent them instead. Now Tonali, a crucial player for Newcastle, has moved to North London.
Newcastle, in their defence, didn’t have anywhere near as much breathing room as Spurs have under the PSR regulations (or the squad cost ratio rules which succeed them this summer), but in trying to be sensible and stringent with their spending, they have ended up with a squad which may contain some costly white elephants.
Last summer’s mistakes have compounded the challenge presented by the departure of Gordon, Tonali and potentially Guimarães, who remains a Newcastle player at the time of writing – they now have an extremely large transfer budget, but also some huge holes to fill. Is it better to spend big on established players and try to push for an instant return to the Champions League? Or to sign younger prospects and try to develop something which will work in the long term?
Newcastle are taking the long view as they rebuild - but will it work?
New signing Bazoumana Touré scored five goals in 32 games for Hoffenheim last seasonplaceholder image
New signing Bazoumana Touré scored five goals in 32 games for Hoffenheim last season | Getty Images
Newcastle’s first moves in the market have made it quite clear as to which direction they are taking. They may have missed out on Muñoz but Hoffenheim winger Bazoumana Touré, signed for a reported £40m, is a potentially exciting replacement, while the club have also agreed a deal worth an estimated £51.5m to sign Freiburg and Switzerland midfielder Johan Manzambi. Both are just 20 years of age.
18-year-old Ajax midfielder Sean Steur and 20-year-old Reims goalkeeper Ewen Jaouen have been added to the squad, too. Youth is now the focus – the experience of spending big money on a 29-year-old like Wissa only to watch them struggle seems to have burned them.
The new tack Newcastle are taking has advantages. There is an established course towards Europe using young talent charted by teams like Brighton and Bournemouth, and the Magpies are starting from a much higher baseline than either of those teams were able to. There’s the dream of building a high-quality young squad which grows together over time, with players like Lewis Hall and Lewis Miley combing with their new comrades to form something exciting and lasting.
As Brighton and Bournemouth are finding out, though, while it’s possible to achieve sustainable success with a youth-focussed player trading model, it’s much harder to reach the next level that way. Newcastle are replacing players who dragged them into the Champions League twice with callow youngsters who may need some time to bed in.
That creates a problem for Howe, whose job was under some pressure as the 2025/26 season drew to a close. He now has to coach a team which can’t reasonably be expected to compete for the top four, but has already set the bar at that height. How patient will the ownership and fanbase be with a long-term rebuild? How many seasons will they wait for players like Touré and Manzambi to fulfil their potential, and what can the club actually achieve with them in the meantime? And if the answer is merely mid-table finishes, will players like Hall and Miley want to leave for greener pastures?
Individually, losing any of Gordon, Tonali and perhaps Guimarães would be a perfectly survivable blow – collectively, the spine is being ripped out of the team, and unless they sign some more established and experienced players as the summer unfolds, Newcastle will head into the new season with a squad which contains very little Premier League experience, or indeed much experience of any kind at all. In trying to avoid gambling excessively with their bank balance, Newcastle may be taking a very difficult kind of gamble altogether.
There is still time to sign some starrier names, and the club have turned a profit on enough of their signings to have the spending power to plug the gaps – but the gaps are only getting more gaping. The they still want a new goalkeeper, a reliable goalscorer, another winger, depth at full-back and the midfield needs major surgery. It’s a lot of ground to cover in one summer.
What Newcastle certainly can’t afford to do is to waste money in the same way that they did a year ago. Whether they wanted or not, and whether they planned for it or not, they are entering a complete rebuild. Get it right, and they can establish themselves as serious long-term contenders for silverware and continental places. Make a mess of it, and they’ll be back with the also-rans for a while. The coming weeks could define Newcastle’s status within the Premier League for years to come.
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