When is a deal actually done? Ups and downs of transfers

NEWCASTLE United supporters spend summer after summer constantly refreshing their phones and scrolling for transfer news, but when is a done deal actually done?

- By LEE RYDER

At Newcastle, they've had their fair share of experience with chasing deals down the years, but one thing is guaranteed - it doesn’t always go to plan! And even when it does, things can collapse when you least expect it.

In a summer that has so far resulted in United getting no senior players over the line, something expected to change in due course, fans can only watch on and hope. Already, the Magpies have reached the stage where they have been linked with hundreds of players in 2025.

Newcastle can’t sign every single one of course and the reality is head coach Eddie Howe will eventually be pictured with four or five new faces if he’s lucky! But that doesn’t mean that names are plucked out of a hat by journalists.

At some stage the player reported may have been scouted, offered, approached, enquired about or even bid for. There is always interest and given that Newcastle’s data driven scouting hub have hundreds of names of players on their database, it’s not a surprise that some slip out.

Newcastle scouts also get spotted out and about, and The Journal has reported on sightings of head of recruitment Steve Nickson in London and across Europe this season. As United fans swept their way across Central Station in an euphoric manner after a London away game last season, they were oblivious to their own chief scout Nickson, who quietly made his way past them after a scouting mission that very same weekend.

Despite three barren windows, in which Newcastle did not make a senior signing, Howe has been clear on the work going on behind the scenes. He told The Journal last season: “I have always said we have to do the work. So we have to prepare as if we can (sign players).”

THE SCOUTING DEPARTMENT