Newcastle United: Chris Waugh and who is conducting the transfer business

Chris Waugh has been speaking about who is conducting Newcastle United’s transfer dealings this month on the Toon Under Podcast YouTube channel.

Many may have expected Newcastle’s new owners to go big this month in terms of splashing the cash and attracting top stars to Tyneside, but that has certainly not been the case thus far, mainly down to their worrying league position.

However, landing an England international in Kieran Trippier for £12 million and in being seemingly close to signing a proven Premier League striker in Chris Wood, whoever is at the forefront of conducting the Magpies’ transfer business is doing a solid job.

Waugh had this to say on the many people involved in conducting transfer business at Newcastle.

“So [Lee] Charnley was previously basically the lead negotiator at Newcastle. He was involved in the negotiations for Unai Emery and then bringing in Eddie Howe as well, because that was before he actually left as managing director in November.

“But going into this window, a lot of it has been done hands-on by the British-based elements of the ownership, so that is Amanda Staveley, Mehrdad Ghodoussi and Jamie Reuben.

“But they’ve also been receiving advice and given certain parameters to Nicky Hammond, is my understanding, to be able to do a lot of that as well, as in he’s there to basically say ‘this is how contract negotiations should go’, ‘this is the sort of market value for it’.”

TIF Thoughts on Newcastle’s transfer business…

With PIF owning an 80% majority stake in the club, all deals will have to run through them before being signed off and that could have been causing problems given no representative is constantly in the UK, but with Yasir Al-Rumayyan being present for their FA Cup defeat at the hands of Cambridge United, he got to see first-hand what is required.

The chairman of the club went into the dressing room following the defeat to speak to the players as well as Eddie Howe to inform him that he had the full backing of the board this transfer window, which may be how a deal for Chris Wood has accelerated in recent days.

In other news: ‘It was made clear to me’ – Journalist drops exciting behind-scenes Newcastle transfer claim