'Big part' - Newcastle United CEO makes transfer admission after agreeing £33m deal

The Magpies have signed five players so far this window with Will Osula becoming the latest recruit in a £15million deal from Sheffield United. Goalkeepers John Ruddy and Odysseas Vlachodimos have also arrived, as has Lloyd Kelly on a free transfer from AFC Bournemouth, while Lewis Hall’s loan was made permanent from Chelsea.

There is, however, a want for a high profile signing as talks with Crystal Palace over Marc Guehi continue but CEO Eales said: “Some of the unglamorous signings are going to be some of the most important ones for us. When you look back to last year, Yankuba Minteh didn’t actually play for Newcastle but he was a big part of our story last year.”

Newcastle signed Minteh for £7m from Odense Boldklub last summer and despite never kicking ball for the club - instead spending the 2023-24 season on loan at Feyenoord - was sold to Brighton & Hove Albion for £33m.

Minteh’s sale, alongside academy graduate Elliot Anderson’s £35m move to Nottingham Forest, saved United from breaching Premier League Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR), which would have inevitably resulted in a points deduction.

Since then, Paul Mitchell has joined as sporting director with Osula with the focus on bringing in a right-sided centre-back and right forward.

“We’re always trying to improve each transfer window,” Eales told NewcastleWorld. “We’ve got Paul [Mitchell] now in the building and him and Eddie are talking daily. We’ll see [on incomings]. We always want to strengthen so we’ll just have to wait.

“Every decision we make we’ll try and make a better footballing decision. Having people like Paul [Mitchell] and James [Bunce] in the building, it helps us to raise that bar. The great thing is it’s good for everybody. We’re just excited to get working really.

“When looking at the sporting director role, we were really focused on recruiting an expert, we wanted someone who knew the Premier League and also had that global experience, and there’s not many people who tick that box so from our perspective to get someone of Paul’s calibre I think is going to be amazing.

“It is a collaboration. More and more, think of it like a salary cap.

“When you’re looking at signings, you can’t look at it in isolation because there is only a finite amount you can spend so every decision you make from a back-up left-back through to the starting centre forward, they all have a knock-on impact. We have to be efficient as possible with every decision.