Fresh Anthony Gordon & Liverpool claim after Newcastle United seal £68m double deal

The Magpies held talks with Liverpool over the potential sale of Gordon when desperately attempting to raise funds before June 30 in order to comply with Premier League Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR).

In the end, Newcastle managed to avoid having to sell Gordon plus other key assets such as Bruno Guimaraes and Alexander Isak. However, it meant sacrificing two of their most promising youngsters in Yankuba Minteh and Elliot Anderson, who joined Brighton & Hove Albion and Nottinhgham Forest, respectively, for a combined £68million.

There have been suggestions that the exit talk has unnerved Gordon, particularly with his boyhood club being mentioned, but Howe is confident that the 23-year-old will arrive back on Tyneside ready for the campaign ahead.

“I’m confident he is ok,” said Howe. “I think you can only judge Anthony on what he has given Newcastle on the pitch. He’s been committed. We’ve had no conversations over the summer where it has been fractious or negative.

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“He’s always been the Anthony Gordon who has given absolutely everything to Newcastle and I want to make that clear to all our supporters."

Howe added: “I’d welcome him back with three arms if I had them! He’s such an important player for us, we didn’t want to lose anybody. Why would we want to lose our best players? We fought really hard to make the right decisions. In those last few weeks it was very, very difficult.

“He’s an integral part of what we’re doing. He needs a bit of a break. By the time he comes back he’s ready to go.”

Gordon was left gutted by the sale of close pal Anderson, whose £35m fee is a joint-club record sale along with Andy Carroll’s move to Liverpool in January 2011.

Howe too didn’t want to lose Anderson or Minteh, but admits the situation ended “as good as we could have hoped for”. Failure to comply with PSR would have resulted in an inevitable points deduction.

“It was a very difficult last couple of weeks of June,” said Howe. “The rules forced to do things we didn’t want to do. I want to make that clear we didn’t want to sell any of the players we sold. Absolutely not. Why would we want to sell any of our promising young players Elliot’s someone we’ve invested a lot of time in and it defied the inner feeling we all had associated with the club, it felt wrong.

“We wish Elliot and Yankuba all the very best in their next football clubs. It was a really difficult time, there was a lot of uncertainty and we didn’t know what was going to happen.

“In the end it’s been as good as we could have hoped for in terms of us not being hit with a points deduction which was of course of paramount importance we did that. But we need to make sure we’re not in that position again.”