When Newcastle United fans see £100m incoming new signing deal as easier to get done than… | OneFootball

Newcastle United fans discovered on Monday night that the first major summer 2025 signing is now agreed.

The ever reliable David Ornstein at The Athletic bringing the very welcome news that Nottingham Forest have accepted at last, one of United’s offers.

Third time lucky it is reported to be, with Ornstein stating that the deal is £55m in total, with £52m guaranteed and then potential add-ons of £3m.

Newcastle United first made an offer totalling £45m (including Miguel Almiron) for Elanga on deadline day in August 2024, that was rejected.

Then summer 2025 seeing Eddie Howe and his recruitment going back in this window, making bids and negotiating for some weeks now, with at last success.

I understand the frustration of all Newcastle United fans, as we all want to see positive signings arrive ASAP in any transfer window.

However, at the same time, most NUFC supporters also accept that these major deals can often take time.

It always astonishes me though, how a minority of Newcastle United fans see things in such simple terms. Unwilling to accept that these signings can be very difficult to get completed.

This comparison springs to mind for me.

For the majority of Newcastle United fans, the most expensive purchase we will ever make in our lives, is buying somewhere to live.

Having checked online, I have found that the average house price in Newcastle Upon Tyne is £210,000.

Now I don’t know about you but in my experience (bought three houses in total and selling two of them), buying a house takes forever. With countless delays, problems, issues and so many different people involved in the process of eventually getting it done. It is wide recognised, buying and selling houses, as one of the most stressful times you go through in your life.

Yet plenty of Newcastle United fans refuse to accept that a deal worth around £100m in total when buying a player, can potentially have anything like the same level of issues, problems, delays, complications, numbers of people involved etc. The belief that Newcastle United should just be able to get it done, especially strange when the (potentially) selling club clearly isn’t keen to sell.

It is like knocking on the door of a random house and telling them they need to get out because you want to buy it!

If you are wondering about the £100m figure for a Newcastle United signing such as Anthony Elanga. A total transfer fee of £55m, then Elanga will be for sure going into the upper grouping of wage earners at Newcastle United, so say at least £7m a year (£140,000 per week) wages, David Ornstein saying five year contract, so that is another £35m you are committed to as a club, taking it up to £90m (£55m transfer fee plus £35m wages over five years). Once you start adding agents fees and other costs, I think £100m in total for the value of the deal sounds about right.

When you compare that £100m deal for a Newcastle United signing, compared to you as a fan buying a house for say £200,000, you are talking about a deal that is 500 times more expensive, when bringing in Anthony Elanga.

Yet some people can’t accept that such an expensive deal could potentially take as long as it takes. Look at Man U and Bryan Mbeumo, that has now been going on at least six weeks, the player widely reported as wanting to join them, yet they appear nowhere close to getting it done.

Just like you can end up in a dreaded chain when buying and selling houses, a club like Nottingham Forest will not surprisingly wanting to line up a replacement when losing one of their very best players in Anthony Elanga. Plus of course, wanting to get every last penny for a player they were desperate not to lose.

This is where of course release clause figures in contracts make certain transfers far easier and these contract clause release amounts are especially popular on the continent. No doubt part of this is to try and avoid the endless issues that can arise otherwise. Man U signed Matheus Cunha with a minimum of fuss at the start of this summer’s trading, just as Newcastle United did back in January 2022 with Chris Wood, release clause figures make it so much straightforward.

Reality is that most major deals for signing players have been a long time in the making and things usually only really hot up once you get to July, when clubs know more about where they are at, players know which clubs are after them, then the buying and selling starts in earnest, with one move then often triggering another and so on, as one player is sold by a club they bring in a replacement, then that selling club buys…

These figures are also so easy to talk about in football and especially the Premier League, where they become so common place that you don’t think of it as actual money. The last published accounts for Newcastle United are 2023/24 and the total turnover was £320m, so when you are talking about a total commitment of £100m for just one deal, you are talking about the equivalent of around almost a third of a year’s total club turnover.

For Newcastle United now, when you are a trophy winning team that is also a Champions League competitor, that means the players you are looking for who can be good enough to get in your team, are then obviously going to be big assets at their current clubs. So when you are looking to buy Forest’s best attacking player (Anthony Elanga), Burnley’s number one keeper (James Trafford) and so on, it isn’t like you are wanting their second or third choice whatever.

For those Newcastle United fans who want to believe that nothing is going on, just because no signings made public, I have to say it is pretty feeble viewpoint. Especially when history tells us that when Eddie Howe and NUFC have had the financial power to make signings, then time and time again they have pulled off brilliant deals for quality young players, deals (Isak, Tonali, Bruno, Livramento, Gordon etc etc) that are for serious money and overall financial commitments.

You look at clubs such as Manchester United and their disastrous transfer dealings of recent years. For example their deals (transfer fees and wages) for just say Jadon Sancho and Antony must come to around £300m and having proved to be huge flops, Man U struggling to even sell them on for anything, as they are on such massive wages and have had transfer fees and those agreed wages that are far beyond their actual true ability and values.

So when Newcastle United fans say that the club should just pay whatever it takes, whatever the clubs and/or players are wanting, that is just inviting the kind of levels of disaster that Man U and other clubs have brought on themselves.