This preview was written by Patrick van Straaten, who you can find on Twitter here and Bluesky here. Pat is the co-host of The Transfer Flow Podcast, and in a previous life, he was on the YouTube channel Football Daily.

In 1849 — 32 years before the founding of Newcastle United — the northeastern city was preparing for a special event, the inauguration of the new High Level Bridge by Queen Victoria. Shops were closed, factories ordered “not to produce smoke” ahead of her arrival, and the Tyne was filled with boats, flags hoisted high.

They shouldn’t have bothered. Victoria’s train, returning from Balmoral, was twenty minutes late to the party, then paused on the bridge “altogether for five to ten minutes” as the queen acknowledged her Geordie subjects, before continuing towards London. 

Perhaps on a resentful wind the town council’s bill for the festivities made its way to Buckingham Palace, and so began a lifelong royal distaste for the Toon, Victoria famously ordering the curtains closed on her train compartment whenever she passed through. But almost two centuries on, Newcastle seems to have found room in its heart for a new royal patron. Its cherished football team, bankrolled by Sheikh Mohammed Bin Salman’s Public Investment Fund, has returned to the upper levels of the Premier League, riding half a billion euros of investment to a brace of Champions League qualifications in 4 years. 

The takeover remains divisive among Newcastle fans, but the results are uncontroversial. The 197 points they’ve picked up since 2022 is their best 3-year total in the 38-game era, and with 24/25 yielding a top 5 finish despite the forced sales of Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh, the Magpies prepare for the new campaign in a strong spot, with cash to spend, a beloved and entrenched coach, and one of the best strikers in the world… for now.

No doubt many of the Prem’s managers wish they could copy Victoria, and pretend Newcastle doesn’t exist.

Eventually? Pretty good. Though Newcastle began the campaign in miserable form, scoring 9 and conceding 10 after 9 games to sit in 12th, they ultimately beat Villa to the Champions League on goal difference, even recording one more win than they did in the 22/23 campaign. The underlying numbers put them exactly where they ended up, though a shade closer to the teams below than Chelsea above. Still, this is just a good team.

The memory of those early season travails was ultimately scrubbed away by a convincing winter, with Tonali’s long-delayed incorporation both making Howe’s team tougher to counter and allowing Guimaraes to push higher on the right, yielding double-figure goal involvements for the Brazilian again. Elsewhere, a settled Lewis Hall became a key passer, Barnes, Murphy, and Gordon combined for 23 goals, and Isak matched that total all by himself, as Newcastle crushed reliably down the stretch to end up with a deserved top 5 spot (final day attempt at bed-shitting notwithstanding).

Sagittarius Eddie Howe began the 24/25 campaign just behind Graham Potter and Lee Carsley in the England manager odds, and engaged in a war with Paul Mitchell for control of the Newcastle backroom. He ended it holding the club’s first major trophy in 56 years and with a spot in the Champions League, while Mitchell swapped Wyscout for Indeed. With his success came a reported 50% salary bump and more transfer control, and while the wisdom of Howe’s market instinct is debated (on the Transfer Flow podcast, among other places), his attacking football is solid enough:

This is exactly what you’d expect from watching Newcastle. They took a good number of shots and those shots were of good quality, coming against retreating or unsettled defences. The second-tallest team in the league can certainly stand to improve their set-piece output if they want Ted’s approval (I guess Paul Mitchell won’t be the only stats guy Eddie Howe makes cry this year), but this is otherwise a very solid chart, and the defensive end looks nice too.

Newcastle stop their opponents getting the exact chances they themselves try to engineer, and that high defensive line squeezes up high without getting caught out too often. This is a defence happy to give up shots so long as they suck, and they did well to manage without Sven Botman, who played just 400 minutes as he recovered from a cruciate ligament injury. 

It’s still so funny that the guy who managed Bournemouth to some of the most disgusting end of season xGA totals we’ve ever seen is doing this, but Howe knows exactly what these guys can do and has a little of the Conte knack for extracting the most from even limited players. Comfortable snapping into a high, usually man-to-man press, or dropping into a 4-5-1, Newcastle can both clog up the middle and double up on dangerous wide-men, and when they win the ball, Gordon, Murphy, and Isak are already running. This team is likely to be absolutely miserable to face in the Champions League, but still looks a step from the Premier League elite, and Howe should be — and looks to be — aiming to upgrade the attack, or at least conjure a plausible plan B, if Newcastle want to cut through the weaker sides routinely and compete for the Prem. 

If he can’t do that, he may have cause to regret the success of his power-grab: there are no scapegoats left.

Players out: CB Lloyd Kelly, CM Sean Longstaff, ST Callum Wilson

None of these guys got serious minutes, but, at £13m, Lloyd Kelly turns the club a serious profit after joining on a free transfer. Longstaff likewise brings in eight figures and leaves room for exciting teenager Lewis Miley. Callum Wilson, like his hamstrings before him, should merge with the infinite, but instead will probably do something silly, like join West Ham.

Players in: LW Anthony Elanga, GK Aaron Ramsdale

A loan to buy for Ramsdale is not a horrible outcome: he worked with Howe at Bournemouth, he’s still young and homegrown. It’ll be interesting to see who Howe ends preferring too. Pope is a good shot-stopper and great at claiming high balls, but doesn’t play out; Ramsdale can pass but doesn’t stop crosses or shots. You can only ask a single question to determine which door to take.

Elanga is an overpay but he’s a fine player and strengthens what could be an overworked frontline. The real problem here is that we should be talking about five or six signings, and it is two weeks until the season begins.

As funny as it would be to put, say, Nick Pope here, Alexander Isak scored or assisted 44% of Newcastle’s goals over the league campaign, only trailing Mo Salah in the raw numbers, and his value, according to Transfermarkt, rose from €75m to €120m — a sum the Magpies reportedly rejected from Liverpool this July.

We all know good Isak is. As well as doing all the normal striker stuff — taking shots, scoring goals — he’s a smart presser and exceptionally mobile, with FBref placing him in the top 8% of strikers for successful dribbles and carries into the penalty area. Even that low aerial win number on the radar above is balanced out by 4 headed goals in 24/25, and, at 25 and contracted to 2028, he’s signed up through the majority of his peak.

Isak’s best run last year came around the midway point. After they beat Arsenal on November 2nd, Newcastle scored 27 goals, allowed 12, and put up a +10 xG difference in their 11 league matches before Bournemouth slapped them 4-1 in mid-January, and at the end of that spell, they were 4th, ahead of Chelsea by one point, City and Villa by 3. During that time, Isak racked up 17 goals and assists (compared to 12 in his other 23 appearances), and the one game Newcastle had less xG than their opponent was the Palace match in which he was only fit to play 21 minutes.

Over the run-in, Isak got a 9 goal involvements in 15 apps, while Barnes and Murphy also came into form, but Newcastle were still leapfrogged by Chelsea and City, and nearly reeled in by Villa. Even if the Liverpool interest goes nowhere (which looks less likely by the day), Eddie Howe will be terrified of any extended absence for the player, given these narrow margins at the top of the division (and Isak’s history of toe and groin issues). After missing out on Hugo Ekitike, and seeing Brentford’s stance on Yoane Wissa reinforced by Mbeumo cash, adding athletic back-up is an enterprise which could split the coach’s attention through pre-season.

As of publish time, Isak is not training with the first team, but is still very much a Newcastle player. It remains to be seen if Liverpool or anyone else can make a bid the Magpies will accept.

Newcastle needed an active summer. Last season, 10 players made 28 or more starts in the Prem, while Arsenal and Manchester City had 9 put together, and the Magpies played just 48 games overall, compared to 58 for the Gunners and 61 for City. They’ve also quietly become one of the oldest squads in the division (3rd to Fulham and West Ham in 24/25), so new blood is a must — especially given that their success last year was powered by a Raphinha-like rebirth for Jacob Murphy.

As good as you think Murphy was, he was likely better, registering 8 goals and 12 assists to end the league campaign with more goal involvements than Luis Diaz, Bruno Fernandes, and Jean-Philippe Mateta (who all played more minutes).

Look at his numbers, and it’s clear how he was meant to operate. Above average for progressive receptions, with low pass accuracy but insane — 19th among all players in Europe’s top 5 leagues — xAG p90, the Englishman was routinely left open by the left-sided gravity of Gordon and Isak, and both finished well and was well-finished by his teammates. He didn’t shoot much, but he didn’t take dumb shots. Every throuple could do with a low-maintenance giver, and Murphy was the Newcastle attack’s.

However, at 30 and with no history of comparable output, Murphy is unlikely to manage quite so stupendous a year in 25/26, and so — like many middle-aged men — Eddie Howe has been seduced by a younger model, strengthening his right flank with 23-year-old Anthony Elanga, coming off his own highly-praised campaign. Like Murphy, Elanga isn’t a volume dribbler or really a volume anything, but despite his low touch tally — in the 13th percentile for his position — he was solidly above average for receiving the ball high, taking it into the box, and creating good chances. 

Elanga is a good player and just entering his peak, extending the life-span of this draw-them-left-and-hit-them-right plan A, but the concern remains that the Magpies may find themselves pecking ineffectually at stout defensive sides which can’t be baited into losing their shape. They ranked 5th bottom for shots created off take-ons last season, and with only mediocre set-piece production, it’s unclear how they intend to find open grass against inferior opposition. 

If they succeed in adding Wissa, the club will be pushing in even more chips on their existing strengths — counter-attacks, runs onto throughballs — when they really need someone who can find those runs, or pull apart deep blocks with one-on-ones.

There’s still time in the summer to address these issues. But if Howe doesn’t add a dribble machine or supplementary creator to the ranks by September, his choice to dump so much cash into Elanga over rounded types like Maghnes Akliouche or Nico Paz could attract forensic scrutiny. Turning the volume from forte to fortissimo can only temporarily disguise a one-note approach.

For all their activity in the market, that Newcastle lineup looks almost identical to last season’s (and we’re being optimistic by leaving Isak in there). Missed bids for Ekitike, Trafford, Huijsen, Joao Pedro, and Delap have given Howe a lot of work to do off the training pitch just as his focus should be narrowing. Still, this remains a strong first team, the Magpies are well-placed to compete for cups and top 5 again, and if they can add a creative midfielder, a defender, and a forward, they could open up clear water between them and rivals like Aston Villa and Brighton…so long as Isak stays. 

An Isak exit or injury (or one for Bruno, or even Hall, whose influence on build-up has been underrated) could put a hole in their hopes, and with more football to be played next year, there’s a little too much downside risk in this squad. But we had to vote on the teams in their current state, and that means assuming Isak is on the team.

Prediction: 6th