Speaking on the latest episode of Pod on the Tyne, Chris Waugh has revealed how many Newcastle United players could be moved on.
While the Magpies enjoyed a very strong end to the season by only losing one league game at home in 2022 and managing to finish 11th in the Premier League, their squad may have slightly overachieved considering they still have eight players in their squad who won them the Championship in 2017.
This shows the ignorance and lack of care Mike Ashley showed to the club by keeping them around for so long, but now under new ownership, it appears likely that it will be an exciting summer, with players such as Lucas Paqueta, Dean Henderson and Dominic Calvert-Lewin already linked with moves to Tyneside.
When new players arrive, though, that means some have to be moved on, and Waugh believes the amount that Eddie Howe wishes to see leave is in double figures.
He said: “Newcastle are going to have about 32 senior players when players return from loans and the ones they’ve already got outside of the squad, and Eddie Howe wants to bring in between four and six players this summer, which means they’re going to have to move on 10-15 players.
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“A lot of the players who haven’t been featuring and who you would have thought to be the ones who will potentially move on, are in their late 20s, early 30s. They’ve still got decent contracts at Newcastle, some of them long-term, some of them a year or two – but their wages compared to what their market value would be wage-wise is huge.”
TIF Thoughts on Newcastle’s summer business…
In January, Howe had to make the tough decision on which players to omit from his Premier League squad, with Isaac Hayden, Ciaran Clark and Jamal Lewis all falling short, so it would appear likely that those three could be some of the first to leave if they weren’t favoured before the Magpies went on a good run of form.
Moving players on will be key for Newcastle this summer, not only to create space in their 25-man squad, but also to increase their transfer budget, which is surprisingly only said to be £60m, so getting transfer fees in and players off the wage bill will be huge for PIF.