‘Very close’ - Newcastle United’s cunning FFP plan to kick-start quiet summer transfer window

Football financial expert Stefan Borson believes Newcastle United will continue to sell academy and young players to bolster their FFP/PSR coffers.

A tactic deployed by Manchester City and Chelsea, one criticism of the regulations is how it has become incentivised to offload youth stars. With no previous transfer fees involved, selling a youngster generates pure profit on the balance sheet.

Man City have astonishingly sold £475million worth of graduates since Pep Guardiola arrived in 2016. This has bankrolled their ability to sign the likes of Erling Haaland to maintain a fierce grip on the Premier League title.

Newcastle are laying the foundations to replicate this policy and saw the first fruits of that labour this summer. Yankuba Minteh joined a year ago and, despite never playing for the Magpies, was flipped for a £26million profit.

Elliot Anderson also reluctantly left, with Darren Eales revealing his exit helped Newcastle keep Anthony Gordon, Bruno Guimaraes and Alexander Isak. Monetary guru Borson has tipped more United players to leave after giving themselves more “leeway” to splash the cash.

“The year that’s dropped off in the rolling three-year period was a bad year for them,” he told Football Insider. “That means they do have more leeway this year. But they have been very clear that they were very close to breaching for 2023-24. Darren Eales gave an interview last week where he explained how close they were.

“I wouldn’t expect them to go crazy. I think a lot of the talk is quite wishful thinking in terms of the spending that’s necessary. I wouldn’t expect them to go crazy. I think a lot of the talk is quite wishful thinking in terms of the spending that’s necessary.

“But with any of these teams, the key will be what they can bring in. If they can sell players who have effectively got a net book value of zero, either being young players or more experienced players who have been at the club for a long time, and don’t have any book value remaining because it’s all been amortised off, then that would give them more leeway.”