Go on then…Rate the summer 2024 Transfer window.

[ScottishMagpie]

1/10.

[Hanshithispantz]

The annoying thing is that even if Howe's list is small, the list of players we could purchase for PSR purposes (Minteh) isn't.

 

Buying players, loaning them out and then selling them on for a profit is the best way to increase you transfer pot, and a window where we didn't sign anyone would have been the perfect time to take advantage of it.

 

 

Edited August 31 by Hanshithispantz

[Aiston]

2/10 at a push.

 

Easily the worst in years.

 

Even the 9 keepers we signed are shit.

[Weznufc]

1 it was piss poor 

[Wallsendmag]

6. Didn't lose any of our big hitters. Think we might next year though.

[Paully]

Can someone post Craig Hope's article please?!

[Shearergol]

9 minutes ago, Hanshithispantz said:

The annoying thing is that even if Howe's list is small, the list of players we could purchase for PSR purposes (Minteh) isn't.

 

Buying players, loaning them out and then selling them on for a profit is the best way to increase you transfer pot, and a window where we didn't sign anyone would have been the perfect time to take advantage of it.

 

 

 

 

Amazed we haven't gone down this route. Perhaps we're going to flip Pivas next year?

 

 

[SUPERTOON]

47 minutes ago, r0cafella said:

I have a question for everyone mind. 
 

1, do we believe the club has a preference to sign players with PL experience?

2, if yes, do we believe this preference is the manager or the clubs?

3, do we believe we can juggle psr with this preference?

I think we do have a preference but not to the degree some people think. I also think the Tonali transfer has put them off shopping abroad.

[Kazzie]

11 minutes ago, Paully said:

Can someone post Craig Hope's article please?!

REVEALED: The truth behind Newcastle's turbulent transfer window, why Amanda Staveley was forced out and uncertainty over Eddie Howe's future, writes CRAIG HOPE
---
By Craig Hope

Published: 21:00 EDT, 30 August 2024 | Updated: 21:00 EDT, 30 August 2024

This is all starting to feel a bit Mike Ashley. Now there is a statement you never thought you’d make when, 12 months ago, Newcastle United were about to play in the Champions League for the first time in 20 years and were signing £52million Italy internationals.

It was, in reality, something of an illusion, the notion of a Saudi-backed super club ready to become No 1 in the world, the intention as declared by chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan.

The truth was that Eddie Howe’s brilliant management, their equally remarkable recruitment and force-of-nature personalities such as Amanda Staveley and husband Mehrdad Ghodoussi had taken them on a magic carpet ride, fuelled by optimism and renewed ambition. Not to mention the relief of no more Ashley.

In just 18 months, the team went from 19th to fourth and barely a misstep was made. Yet, in terms of infrastructure —training ground, stadium, sponsorship and commercial revenues — it remained a work in progress. As chief executive Darren Eales said: ‘It’s like building a plane whilst in the air.’

Well, this summer, that plane — and the carpet — have come crashing back down to earth. For the first time, we can reveal the truth behind a boardroom fallout that has shaped what Howe describes as the most difficult summer of his managerial career, in which only £10m was spent on one back-up player, new sporting director Paul Mitchell was unable to deliver the manager’s top target, Marc Guehi, and stars such as Anthony Gordon were nearly sold to satisfy a £70m deficit in meeting the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules. It is Howe who will be left to pick up the pieces amid the turbulence.

Newcastle endured a difficult summer transfer window where they didn't achieve their aims

They failed to sign their major target Marc Guehi, despite a lengthy pursuit of the defender

There was also a boardroom fallout that led to Amanda Staveley and husband Mehrdad Ghodoussi selling their six per cent share and leaving the club (pictured earlier this year)

 

But the plane had started to come apart towards the end of last season, when tension at boardroom level would lead to Staveley and Ghodoussi leaving the club in July. However, as multiple sources have now confirmed, the co-owners were forced out.

We have learnt that, when Jacobo Solis — a senior figure from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, the majority owners — asked questions over the day-to-day running of the club, Eales communicated that he could not do things as he would like because Staveley and Ghodoussi were too involved. It caused a split at the very top of the club, and Staveley and Ghodoussi felt they had no option but to sell their six per cent share and go. This, it is said, left them heartbroken.

For fans, Howe and players, it meant the loss of the reassuring presence of a pair who had been the face of Newcastle re-United. Staveley could be a maverick, but as one source said: ‘Everything around her was a million miles an hour, but she always wanted the best for the club. She got s*** done.’
 

Without them — and with Eales and his new appointment Mitchell now taking the lead on recruitment — s*** hasn’t got done this summer. In fact, it’s been a bit of a s***show.

This brings us back to Ashley. In 2008, he brought in Dennis Wise as a de facto director of football when Kevin Keegan was manager. Keegan quit within eight months and later won a constructive dismissal case, citing the interference of Wise and the removal of his control over transfers. That is not to compare anyone at the club to Wise and Keegan, Mitchell arrives with a good reputation, but more so to highlight the dangers when the ‘working dynamic’ — Howe’s words — suddenly changes.

He said that during an extraordinary half-hour with written journalists at a pre-season training camp in Germany in July, when he effectively placed a probationary period on his working relationship with Eales, Mitchell and new performance director James Bunce. It was at a time when he was being linked with the England job, a vacancy he is yet to categorically distance himself from.

‘I absolutely want to stay but it has to be right for me and the club,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in me saying I’m happy staying at Newcastle if the dynamic isn’t right. As a new team coming together, we have to set our boundaries.’

Howe was told to concentrate on coaching the squad. Before this window, he worked closely with Staveley and Ghodoussi. They were his allies and formed a transfer team, aided (but not necessarily led) by sporting director Dan Ashworth.

It has all started to feel a bit Mike Ashley this summer, a statement that would have been barely believable 12 months ago as Newcastle began their return to the Champions League

Chief executive Darren Eales has come under heavy criticism for his work over the window

Alongside new sporting director Paul Mitchell, the pair have taken a lead on recruitment

Their record was close to perfect — Kieran Trippier, Bruno Guimaraes, Nick Pope, Alexander Isak, Gordon, each brought in at what have proven to be bargain prices. Howe had round-the-clock updates, even jumping off water slides during a family holiday in California to take calls from the owners. This summer, he has been left somewhat in the dark.

Mitchell, we are told, said that he could deliver Guehi when it was decided that the Crystal Palace centre back was the target all parties agreed would improve the team. And so began a month-long saga in which Palace chairman Steve Parish, some suspect, never really intended to sell Guehi. Mitchell believed he had a good relationship with Parish, but every failed offer found its way into the public domain, much to Newcastle’s annoyance.
 

Those inside St James’ Park also disputed what constituted an offer. A text message? A chat? Either way, the figures being discussed went from £45m to close to £70m in a one-horse race. It was not a good look.

Sources say Parish was enjoying it all the while. He was, it is claimed, extremely miffed by Newcastle’s approach for his sporting director Dougie Freedman in April. It is said that he felt Eales and Newcastle had gone behind his back. Freedman opted to stay — the salary on offer was said to be too low — and Mitchell was instead appointed in July.

As recently as Tuesday, there was confidence that a deal for Guehi would happen. Some close to Palace raised eyebrows and a smile when Alan Shearer publicly called on Eales and Mitchell to deliver a big signing, and within hours an offer of £65m plus £5m in add-ons had landed. But when Parish told Newcastle that, after a knee injury suffered by defender Chadi Riad, the asking price was £70m plus £5m, Mitchell was furious.

It is said he has been driven mad by the constant moving of the goalposts on the deal. Parish strung them along, perhaps always intent on retribution over Freedman. There is, then, sympathy for Newcastle and Mitchell, who had worked hard in the belief it could happen.

But one source said: ‘There is a way to play Steve Parish. You wonder if Amanda and Mehrdad would have got the deal done.

‘There was a feeling earlier in the summer that £50m should have been enough for Guehi. They were excellent negotiators. Look at the deal for Gordon last year — she stuck to her guns and got it done at £40m. Maybe that has been missed.’

Guehi, who was Howe's No 1 target this summer, was chased throughout the transfer window

Newcastle figures became increasingly miffed as they failed to get a deal done with Palace chairman Steve Parish for the England defender, who some claim enjoyed the whole saga

Mitchell has suggested other names to Howe in recent weeks — including Chelsea’s Axel Disasi and Nice defender Jean-Clair Todibo — but the head coach did not want to sign the wrong type of player or character for the sake of it. Todibo went to West Ham on loan and was hooked after just 45 minutes of his full debut this week. Multiple sources have told us that Howe was right to guard against signing him.

It is suggested that Mitchell has been frustrated by Guehi being the only viable option at centre back, but we understand there was a longer list of targets who Howe had liked coming into the summer, but they moved on. Two players have arrived — Lloyd Kelly on a free transfer (a deal that was brokered towards the end of last season) and striker William Osula, a 21-year-old understudy from Sheffield United.

With talk of increasing tension internally, it left Howe to answer some difficult questions yesterday morning, when he conceded to the press that no new faces were likely to arrive.

‘We haven’t had the window that we wanted to have, there is no denying that,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to sit here and say it’s been a brilliant transfer window for us. I think everyone would look at me and think, “I’m not sure he’s telling the truth there”.
 

‘We’re in a really difficult situation with PSR and available funds, attracting the right players and players who we think can make a difference. It’s such a delicate spot for us, we’ve got to try and get it right and if we don’t, then doing nothing — as frustrating as that is — is probably the best option. There’s a feeling we have a good squad, but there’s a feeling there’s a few areas we need to strengthen.’

One of those areas was right wing, a position in need of improvement since the Saudi takeover nearly three years ago. There was a deadline-day approach for Nottingham Forest’s Anthony Elanga, but it was all too late for a deal to happen. Again, it evoked memory of calamitous deadline days under Ashley.

It has left Howe and supporters frustrated. Newcastle have managed to keep Gordon, Isak and Guimaraes this summer, but fail to make the Champions League come May and there is a danger the trio will be off. To that end, the need to strengthen the team this season was even greater.

And what of that chaotic weekend at the end of June when Newcastle frantically battled to avoid breaching PSR rules and a 10-point deduction? Howe had warned the club that the hole in the accounts needed to be resolved in good time, without star players being unsettled. But that is what happened with Gordon.

Mail Sport broke the story of the winger being offered to Liverpool. He was with England in Germany at the time, and a medical in Leipzig was even mooted, so real was the possibility of a deal accelerating.

It did not happen because Staveley brokered the £33m sale of Yankuba Minteh to Brighton and Elliot Anderson — much to the player and Howe’s disappointment — was sold to Forest for £35m. However, the latter was only possible because Newcastle agreed to take Greek goalkeeper Odysseas Vlachodimos for an eight-figure fee that we are told would ‘make your eyes water’. The Magpies have since tried to send him out on loan.

William Osula's £10m move from Sheffield United meant he was the only outfield player Newcastle spent money on this summer, yet the Danish striker is merely a back-up

Many have claimed the window would've gone a lot better if Staveley was still around the club

Howe has been left frustrated but it is him who has to pick up the pieces amid the turbulence

But with PSR satisfied, they had money to spend this summer. As one source said: ‘Yes, PSR limits what the club can do, but there was still big scope to spend with the funds available, plus extra headroom generated by sales. But they haven’t sold and haven’t bought. That’s nothing to do with PSR — that’s negotiating skills.’

Supporter angst will turn on Eales and Mitchell, not least because of Shearer’s warning to them. Eales did not help himself when, on a stage in the St James’ fan zone this month, he started a terrace chant with a crowd who would rather he was closing deals. Dancing Darren, as he was dubbed, has got PIF to dance to his tune with the removal of Staveley and Ghodoussi, but his first transfer window in charge has ended on the flattest of notes.

To compound a bad day, the club were forced to distance themselves from Conservative MP Robert Jenrick using access to St James’ to promote his leadership candidacy. He was with former chairman Sir John Hall who, Newcastle said, had told them he wanted to film a biographical piece on his own life.

There was also the bizarre issue of a private landowner erecting fencing directly outside some East Stand turnstiles, raising concerns over fan safety ahead of tomorrow’s visit of Tottenham. This isn’t the club’s fault, of course, but it is an extra headache for them, especially as brows will already be banging after the most disorderly summer in recent memory.

And we thought the bedlam of Ashley was a thing of the past.

 

 

Edited August 31 by Kazzie

[levelsevenlee]

1/10.

 

Embarrassing is a good word.

 

I'm not counting Lewis Hall as a positive or a negative to the window; that deal was done a year ago, with the obligations met by the end of the season.

 

Bringing in a striker who doesn't score goals and Bournemouth's left back as the only incomings... well, I guess you could argue that bolsters the squad a bit. But everyone around us has at least attempted to make their first team better. We've stood still.

 

Not good enough. Really calls into question the competence of our exec team, and also the relationship between Mitchell and Howe... i.e. has Mitchell been suggesting decent racehorses but Howe's demanding a unobtainable unicorn?

 

Also, Isaac Hayden is still an NUFC player.

[mighty__mag]

According to these .....

 

https://www.givemesport.com/every-premier-league-clubs-summer-transfer-window-ranked/

 

Our window was placed 16th out of the 20 clubs, probably about right, but I don't agree with their winner.

[timinperu]

Mitchell coming in late has seriously undermined our progress in my opinion. Keeping our best players has been a boon, but with no purchases for the first team, and losing two prospects, this season may well prove to be a damp squib. If so we will lose our best players, the forward momentum will be lost and a massive and costly rebuilding will be required.

It looks like we have been played by Parish, this shows the lack of acumen in the top management. We need leaders not professional journeymen.

[HayDen Traces]

Just plain awful. Eales sounds like a huge problem for us according to Hope's article & a return to Ashley's dictatorship, penny pinching style. Its awful it sounds as though Eales stabbed them in the back and got PIF to force them out.

 

Amanda and Mehrdad certainly got shit done and they worked so well together. Its not been the same club since they left.

 

It will be interesting to see how this unfolds but a bad result and performance vs Spurs could see further cracks start to appear.

 

Gutted the way this summer has gone.

 

[The Butcher]

New Isak and Gordon deals could lift the mood mind.

[HayDen Traces]

2 minutes ago, The Butcher said:

New Isak and Gordon deals could lift the mood mind.

We need a lift.

[Jackie Broon]

4 minutes ago, The Butcher said:

New Isak and Gordon deals could lift the mood mind.

 

Until we hear they have release clauses in them.

[frankpingel]

Massive opportunity to upgrade at least one 1st team position has gone so I cannot rate it highly. A loan of someone without any obligation would've bumped my rating slightly but we didn't even manage that. 

Keeping our pivotal players is obviously great but overall its a 3/10 and that's me being generous.

[JonBez comesock]

3/10

[mighty__mag]

What I make of Hope's article,

Amanda and Mehrdad were spending and delivering what Eddie wanted, but seemingly overspending to the point we could have faced a 10 point deduction, Eales has likely been questioned in his role, and shifted the blame towards the pair citing it's down to their transfer interference why we haven't met PSR constraints, this forcing the sale of two talented young players to comply. If you draw your own conclusions, it seems Amanda and Mehrdad were happy trying to be stake holders and negotiators, but Eales has possibly pointed out its not what they're here to do, and they should have been looking to replace Ashworth much sooner, instead of leaving us with no qualified sporting director, and the panic of selling a star player like Gordon.

I think Eales has definitely got his way, could possibly be by pointing out that the pair were perhaps running the club while we have appointed people into positions that he may have claimed the stake holders are holding back those allegedly qualified to carry out.

 

For me it will either come back to bite Eales on the arse, or he was right to point it out, that way we don't fall into traps that could cost us in the future, ie: point deductions, losing key players, I guess some tough choices have to be made, it's interesting to read several times, Amanda gets shit done mind.

 

 

Edited August 31 by mighty__mag

[Holloway]

it gets a 3/10 from me,only because I think Kelly will prove an astute acquisition. The rest is an utter fucking shambles, from the frantic last minute scrabbling around to sell players to avoid a points deduction, to a very public mugging by Parish. Over to you, Eddie.

[ikri]

3/10

 

For Guehi especially, if we valued him at £50m then we should have stood firm at that figure and walked away instead of making ourselves look like utter fools, chasing a player who clearly wasn't too bothered if he moved or not, at a club who were determined to take the piss out of us.  We shouldn't ever allow ourselves to get into the trap that Man Utd got themselves into where there was an immediate 30% price lift the moment they wanted a player, all because too often they simply paid up.

 

Our scouting team needs a good examination too.  I can't believe that there aren't talents out there, outside the English leagues, who could be purchased for significantly less and improve the squad immensely.  Some of our best signings have come in from abroad, why do we waste time and money chasing players based in England?

 

Finally, we desperately need to find ways to get rid of players that we want to move on.  We can't be sentimental about players, if they're deemed to no longer be good enough they should be shifted on.  If we value Miggy at £15m but no one wants him at that price, drop the asking price.  It's better for us to get something for a player than it is for them to run down their contract and leave for nothing whilst adding nothing to the team.

 

 

Edited August 31 by ikri

[Stottie]

Masses of blah blah from Hope there but he doesn't mention where the window started, which was a failed attempt to land Tosin on a free. Surely Tosin was "the top target", not Guehi whose pursuit began later. Back in June we were given

 

"Craig Hope: UPDATE: NUFC offer was made to Tosin Adarabioyo over weekend & talks ongoing. Could move quickly if all agreed."

 

So he was lying to us then, is rewriting history now, or has simply forgot what he wrote two months ago. Take your pick.

 

It sounds like Lloyd Kelly has been given big wedge, as was Targett, so I have limited sympathy for the club failing to land a free or low fee transfer based on wage issues. What you don't pay in a fee, you'll pay in wages is pretty much how they work.

[BergenMagpie]

Disappointed by the window but even moreso by reading this board. Been back to pre-takeover levels.

 

The same fucking posters spewing out the same 10-20 posts in the same threads every day. So exhausting to read and so embarrassing. Making us all look like tools

[relámpago blanco]

7/10 We didn't get a CB and RW but we didn't lose any good players. I'm glad we have a backup CF as well. 

 

We just can't take risks with PSR so it is what it is. We can go big next summer.

[Benwell Lad]

10/10 for retention.

3/10 for recruitment, Kelly was a good acquisition and we now have a third senior striker. I'd have given it 2/10 if we'd paid 70m for Guehi and given ourselves an even tighter FFP straight jacket going forward.

The essential thing now is to keep the squad we have fit and not end up playing the only 11 fit players for weeks on end like last season.

Also we need to have harmony at the top of management between playing, recruitment and commercial. Howe did sound happier in his latest press conference, albeit like most of us a bit frustrated regarding incomings. He made a point about a really good window is getting the right players in who improve you and a really bad one is getting the wrong players in who don't. On that basis it was a neutral window I guess, but certainly nowhere near as bad as some are saying and the press narrative wants to push.

 

 

Edited August 31 by Benwell Lad