Eddie Howe gives honest opinion on Newcastle’s transfer activity this summer

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Eddie Howe has given his assessment of Newcastle United’s summer transfer window so far.

So far in this transfer window Newcastle have brought in Sandro Tonali from AC Milan and Harvey Barnes from Leicester. Two absolutely top-class signings which definitely strengthen the side ahead of what promises to be a grueling campaign.

As far as outgoings go, we’re still awaiting confirmation of Allan Saint-Maximin‘s move to Al Ahli and the official announcement of Karl Darlow‘s move to Leeds. Jamal Lewis was just confirmed as being a Watford player this morning having signed on a season-long loan with an option to buy.

Eddie Howe hints Newcastle’s transfer activity is not done

Saint-Maximin’s move to Al Ahli is the one that will bring decent finances back into the club and unlock that wiggle room in terms of Financial Fair Play, however Eddie Howe has shared that his sale wasn’t needed just to fund the Harvey Barnes transfer despite the two amounts being fairly similar – around the £30million-£40million mark.

Speaking about transfers at Newcastle’s training camp in the USA, Howe said (via Football Daily): “We’re really pleased with the two that we’ve done. We’d love to bring a little bit more in, but until that’s done it’s very difficult.

“I think when you’re looking through this summer as a whole, as a transfer market it’s been very difficult to bring players in and I think that will continue to be the case. The better the team does and the higher the quality we have in our squad, to actually improve, what we have becomes more difficult.

“We don’t necessarily need to sell to bring any more players in. That wasn’t the case, again going back to Allan [Saint-Maximin], it wasn’t a straight swap for Harvey [Barnes], that was something we needed to sell this summer do to all of the transfers we’ve done.”

Newcastle look desperately in need of defensive reinforcements

Because of the way FFP works, Saint-Maximin’s sale should do more than just add £30-something million into the coffers which is what Howe hinted at saying it needed to be done in order to fund the other transfers.

It still doesn’t shed any real light on how much is left to play with and how the likes of unloading Jamal Lewis and Karl Darlow’s wages will affect things, but Howe seems confident that there’ll be further additions and that’s good enough for me.

We definitely need more defensive options, that much has been made abundantly clear in pre-season, but if no further incoming business is done, it’s certainly not a disastrous window given the two additions we have made.