Newcastle’s summer transfer window saw the club shell out over £250m on Nick Woltemae, Yoane Wissa, Anthony Elanga, Jacob Ramsey and Malick Thiaw, with Aaron Ramsdale also arriving on loan.
Increasing revenues to allow for sustained spending is clearly a goal for new CEO David Hopkinson, and a big chunk of that outlay has been covered by the £130m sale of Alexander Isak, but it’s unclear just how sustainable this recent approach is.
On that subject, The i’s Mark Douglas suggests that a move for Nottingham Forest’s Elliot Anderson is desired, but a £100m-plus deal that could create PSR issues ‘very quickly’ if we’re not careful.
With that in mind, he reports that new sporting director Ross Wilson is being tasked to unearth more ‘future stars’, with a number of emerging overseas markets set to be tapped into.
It’s thought a ‘big part’ of Wilson’s job will be to evolve our transfer policy, balancing the club’s short-term needs, which may allow for the signing of proven senior stars, with the arrival of young hidden gems.
This would explain Newcastle’s ‘strong interest’ in AZ Alkmaar’s Kees Smit, with the 19-year-old appearing to be as PSR-friendly alternative to Elliot Anderson.
With this in mind, along with Newcastle tapping into the South American markets, we could see more deals like the £6m move that saw Yankuba Minteh arrive from Denmark.
Given our success rate when recruiting from abroad – think Sandro Tonali, Malick Thiaw, Sven Botman and Alexander Isak – it makes sense to shop in Europe and explore more overseas talent pools, with our recruitment team getting few wrong when buying outside of an inflated Premier League market.
