If Newcastle United want to reunite with Elliot Anderson, a deal with plenty of support inside St James’ Park, it would cost them.
Nottingham Forest say the bidding would have to start at an eye-watering £100m. Steep? Undoubtedly, but also a reflection of the Premier League premium you can expect to pay for tried and trusted top flight talent.
Anderson is a fabulous player but given Newcastle’s revenue still lags behind the top clubs, a recruitment model relying on those sort of deals is going to run them into choppy PSR waters very quickly.
Internally, Newcastle know this. Insiders say that a big part of sporting director Ross Wilson’s job is going to be evolving the transfer policy to one that balances short-term needs with the club’s long-term goal of making an impact in emerging markets, where calculated risks can unearth potential future stars.
A new approach to transfers
Newcastle’s strong interest in Kees Smit, the 19-year-old AZ Alkmaar midfielder who is heavily fancied by Europe’s top clubs, is perhaps a sign of this shift in direction. It has the feel of a different sort of potential deal – a first overseas “project player” to buck the trend of recent business.
Howe would no doubt bristle at the perception that he prefers to buy British and it is a lazy trope when he has embraced the signings of Sandro Tonali, Bruno Guimaraes and Alexander Isak so enthusiastically, turning them into the real stars of his team. But this summer’s incomings illustrate a perhaps understandable preference for big game, elite league experience that comes with a price tag.
In recruitment circles the view is that Newcastle’s place in the transfer food chain is a club who prefer to commit to players with experience in Europe’s top five leagues rather than investing in rough diamonds before they have proven themselves. Yankuba Minteh is the honourable exception but they need more like him to build a proper player-trading model.
Given their substantial spend in the summer, there is some urgency around those changes. While Isak’s British record sale offset a chunk of the recruitment drive, Newcastle’s raft of incoming deals included clauses, loyalty bonuses and potential future payments which potentially put them back under the pump, PSR-wise, in the future.
There is money to spend, insiders suggest, but the Isak sale was no silver bullet to end their fretting around financial fair play. To put it bluntly: signing a £100m England international like Anderson would likely require outgoings unless they have other levers to pull.
Newcastle’s South American targets
One of those may be in South America, where Newcastle have been making noises recently. Head of recruitment Steve Nickson has been building a network in Brazil and recently they enquired about Vasco de Gama’s exciting 19-year-old forward Rayan, who has 12 goals in Brazil’s Serie A and is rated at £25m by his club.
Would Newcastle really take the risk? They have been close recently without fully taking the plunge.
Last year they engaged with the representatives of Victor Reis, then of Palmeiras, and River Plate’s Franco Mastantuono in the autumn of 2024. A detailed sales pitch was made to both, months before elite European clubs joined the chase, and Reis in particular responded enthusiastically to Newcastle’s overtures.
Ultimately the club’s PSR worries, of which Howe is kept abreast in monthly meetings, scuppered both deals and Manchester City and Real Madrid gazumped the black and white offers. But those close to negotiations also sensed some caution inside the club about offering the sort of first-team guarantees needed to persuade potential superstars to move to St James’ Park.
PIF keen on multi-club ‘partners’
A year on, the mood feels different. There’s positivity about what Wilson, new CEO David Hopkinson and Howe can achieve together but finessing the transfer policy is something of a litmus test.
PIF, happy with the make-up of the new executive team, are going to be fairly hands off but The i Paper understands ownership PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan is a big admirer of the Red Bull football model of a network of clubs.
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He sees potential in Newcastle adopting a structure where talent can be hot-housed away from the hotbed of St James’ Park and either sold on or developed into players ready for the first team.
The multi-club model is an “aspiration” but in the shorter term, the club are trying to identify potential partner clubs who share playing styles and “values”. A big body of data-led work to improve their loan strategy was commissioned last year but the struggles of loanee Antonio Cordero to get game time for Belgian club KV Westerlo illustrate there is work to do on that front.
“We know how important getting these details right is for the club,” one insider tells The i Paper. Future success might just depend on it.
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