'Yes' - Newcastle United CEO makes £148m transfer claim after finalising club-record deal

The Magpies faced a points deduction before the combined £68million sale of Yankuba Minteh and Elliot Anderson to Brighton & Hove Albion and Nottingham Forest, respectively, just hours before the accounting period deadline on June 30.

While United were reluctant to part ways with both players, in particular Anderson whose £35m fee is a joint club-record sale, it meant they were able to rule out of the possibility of offloading key assets such as Anthony Gordon, Bruno Guimaraes and Alexander Isak.

Gordon has attracted interest from Liverpool where talks between the two clubs did take place last month, while Guimaraes and Isak have been linked heavily with Manchester City and Arsenal.

Geordie Journos: Football finances, with special guest Kieran Maguire

But when asked if he expects the trio to still be Newcastle players come the start of the 2024-25 campaign, Eales replied “Yes.”.

Did they come could to leaving? "Look, you know what the market is like, there will always be noise around any sort of transfer deadline,” Eales replied. “For us, it was one of those situations where we knew what we had to get to.

“It's one of the unintended consequences of PSR that is incentivises the sale of either homegrown players or players that have got a low book value. I think that's something that no-one ever foresaw when the rules came in over 10 years ago now.

“I do think that's something everyone is pretty unified that we need to look at because it's a bit perverse that you would take players who are part of the culture, homegrown players who fans love, and you're almost incentivised in terms of when you're trying to maximise that PSR headroom. But in the end we had to do the deals that were right for the club, that made us compliant.

“So, from that perspective, we did what we had to do. But we kept what I would say are our core players, the type of players like Isak, Gordon, Bruno, Joelinton - those players who are our core. Now it's a case of OK, with that new cycle ahead of us now, how can we look to strengthen? How can we look to go to the next level?”