PSR £100m stunning boost – Newcastle United clever sellers | OneFootball

In this PSR modern day football world, Newcastle United have been persistently accused of one thing.

The club had to vastly improve how they traded, they had to become clever sellers.

It was universally agreed that under Eddie Howe and the new/current Newcastle United owners, the club has become clever buyers.

That very first January 2022 transfer window saw Kieran Trippier (£12m), Dan Burn (£13m) and Bruno Guimaraes (£41.65m) all bought in, stunning business I’m sure you will agree. What they have given Newcastle United has been immense these past three years.

Whilst that January 2022 £25m purchase of Chris Wood might now be seen in a ‘slightly’ different light. Callum Wilson picking up a serious injury at the end of December 2021 left Eddie Howe with not a single Premier League level striker for the relegation fight, Howe and NUFC derided for paying that £25m release clause for Wood. Lazy people saying Chris Wood a flop at NUFC, the reality is that he was a stunning success. Eddie Howe had a plan to use the striker in an unselfish role with relegation looking all but a certainty. Yes, Chris Wood only scored two goals in the second half of that 2021/22 season BUT he was key to the fact that Newcastle not only survived, they had the third best form of any PL side in the entire second half of that season and picked up an amazing 29 points in the 15 games Wood started. Trippier swiftly got injured and missed almost all of that relegation fight, whilst Eddie Howe took it very slowly with Bruno, over six weeks before he got a PL (away start) and it was April 2022 before the midfielder started at St James’ Park. It was Wood, Burn and an on-loan Targett who came in and were key to helping Newcastle United avoid what would have been a disastrous relegation for the new ownership.

Following that January 2022 window, we then saw further signings of the likes of Pope, Isak, Livramento, Hall, Botman, Gordon, Hall, Tonali etc etc, stunning incoming business.

Anyway, back to becoming good sellers.

I think in all honesty the criticism was/is laughable about Newcastle United failing to be good sellers in the years that immediately followed the takeover.

To be good sellers you have to have something to sell and that others want to pay good money for.

Eddie Howe and the new owners inherited an absolute shambles from Mike Ashley and Steve Bruce, a team that was on its way to relegation and a squad not fit for purpose. The result of clueless mismanagement and a decade and a half of Ashley failing to allow proper investment in new signings.

When you add an abject failure to properly invest in the infrastructure, the facilities (ice bath wheelie bins, the hydrotherapy kiddies paddling pools…), the youth recruitment and academy as a whole, the whole set-up was on its knees.

The idea that Newcastle United were failing to be good sellers, where is the evidence of that???

Who are these players they could/should have sold to help offset the essential rebuilding of the first team, with rebuilding of a squad an even more overwhelming challenge.

If Eddie Howe had sold any of the small group of players he had inherited that other clubs were interested in buying, it would have made less than zero sense. Selling any of the small group of quality players for decent transfer fees would simply have fatally weakened the team, with serious money needing to be spent to replace them, with no guarantee that replacements would be good enough to do the job.

Takeovers at other major Premier League clubs are almost in every case very different, when it comes to that player trading situation. They do have squad players that can be sold for good money and young players coming through the club as well, who can also attract big money.

Things have changed…

Now imagine Newcastle United then doing deals whereby £100m of incoming transfer fees would be generated, from three departing players who had only started 17 Premier League matches for NUFC in total in their careers, plus somebody who turned 31 before playing for his new club and who had only started one PL match for Newcastle in the past ten months and played only 150 PL minutes this season in total.

It gets even better, the three outgoing players who had made only 17 NUFC Premier League starts between them, had cost only £7m in transfer fees in total. Whilst the 31 year old had cost £20m but that was six years ago.

Even even better, from a PSR perspective these deals absolutely stunning, as all but a couple of million pounds of the £100m incoming, will be pure profit from a PSR angle.

Just in case you haven’t already guessed, the four players in question are Elliot Anderson, Yankuba Minteh, Lloyd Kelly and Miguel Almiron.

The critics (especially those in the NUFC fanbase…) can’t have it all ways.

Nobody is celebrating Newcastle United selling two promising young players. However, with the situation Eddie Howe and the Newcastle United owners have been faced with, especially when it comes to PSR, these sales have been blinding business.

The brilliant recruitment of the likes of Isak, Tonali, Bruno, Gordon, Hall and others, was always going to have to be paid for at some point.

That point came in June 2024 when Anderson and Minteh were sold to avoid breaking PSR rules.

However, their sale was two-fold in terms of the job it did, as it not only solving a critical immediate massive problem, it also helped lay a positive platform moving forward, which has then been brilliantly built on further with the sales of Kelly and Almiron.

Difficult questions but obvious answers

Would Eddie Howe and the Newcastle United fans liked to have seen Anderson and Minteh stay? Yes.

Would Eddie Howe and the Newcastle United fans preferred to have seen an Isak or Gordon sold? No.

In the PSR world we live in, difficult decisions need to be made.

In an ideal world blah bah blah BUT in the real world, improving the PSR position by around £100m for the loss of these four squad players, is astonishing business.

This massively sets Newcastle United up for the summer 2025 transfer window and beyond, meaning that Eddie Howe can now target those first team contenders that he has been desperate to bring in for some time, especially at right centre-back and right wing.

A lot of nonsense talked by some people, including fans. Suddenly, how are we going to cope without Kelly and Almiron? Newcastle United would never ever have been in a position in the future to bring in anything remotely close to £31m in the future for this pair. Miggy’s time was done and good luck to him, he hadn’t been a factor this season, whilst making a £20m+ profit, especially when all PSR positive, on a free agent signing seven months earlier who had suggested in no way he would ever be a regular first team contender…

Yankuba Minteh looks to have done ok BUT no better for Brighton. I think he is going to be an ok player but no better. Arne Slot spent an entire season with him at Feyenoord and yet showed zero interest in taking him to Liverpool. When £33m is a low transfer fee by Liverpool standards and they clearly need a long-term Salah replacement, maybe even this summer unless a new contract is agreed, the fact Slot had no interest, tells you that Minteh isn’t some superstar that Newcastle have let slip away. To buy for £7m and then sell for £33m a year later without him having played a single NUFC game and Feyenoord having paid his wages for that year, that is an absolute dream PSR deal and the kind of thing Chelsea and others are doing time after time after time.

Newcastle United are having to desperately try and catch up.

As for Anderson, yes, this is the one that hurts.

However, when you look at the facts, you have to also accept the reality.

Newcastle United have some very high quality players in the positions that Elliot Anderson plays, would anything have really changed?

To get £35m for a player who cost nothing, who almost certainly would have still been a regular sub this season, how can you argue that in the circumstances, both immediate AND moving forward, that this hasn’t been a class deal for Newcastle United? Also, a class deal for the player himself.

Elliot Anderson has had undoubted promise for some time but playing ahead of the likes of Bruno, Tonali, Joelinton, Gordon…?

Only 13 Premier League starts in his Newcastle United career and this year (2025) he will turn 23, Elliot Anderson arguably needed to find another club anyway to fulfil his potential. Plus, if he had spent another season on Newcastle’s bench, what might NUFC have banked for him in say summer 2025? Not £35m, that is for sure.

The way that FFP/PSR is set up, is indeed a joke.

However, within this reality, Newcastle United these past eight months shown themselves to be brilliant sellers, £100m for four squad players who in my opinion, none of whom were going to become first team regulars at NUFC.