Newcastle United may be about to get ruthless amid 'concern' as £197.6m Liverpool PSR truth told

Eddie Howe has warned of the danger of Newcastle United going 'stale' after admitting a lack of player turnover was a 'slight concern'.

CEO Darren Eales was the first to recognise that Newcastle had 'not done a very good job' at trading in the last decade - a period which stretches back to the Ashley era - and the Magpies narrowly escaped a PSR breach following the 11th-hour sales of Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh last June. Various senior figures at the club have repeatedly stressed that no one wants to be in that position again.

That is why Newcastle are wary of making a decision in January that would have a knock-on effect on future windows and, in Howe's words, make it 'very difficult to do what we need to do' in the summer. However, Howe stressed there needs to be a 'certain element of trading in and out to keep the group dynamic new' moving forward as sometimes the same squad can 'produce a staleness and a negative product'.

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"We haven't had a huge turnover of players and I think that's a slight concern," the Newcastle boss admitted. "There's always a concern in two ways. If you bring too many players in, that can have a negative impact in terms of upheaval of the team and relationships are not forming, and vice versa the other way.

"You can keep that staleness away in various ways: innovation from us in terms of the team, training, loads of team-building stuff and different things you can do to make sure the players are not coming into the same environment."

On that point, Howe insisted it was his job to 'do better' with a 'very good' squad, which he still believes in, after Newcastle picked up just a point from six on offer against struggling Crystal Palace and West Ham last week and mustered only two shots on target combined.

However, Newcastle simply have to become better sellers in 2025 after spending upwards of £450m since the takeover, but only bringing in a fraction of that figure through trading. Eales even revealed that the so-called big six averaged £156m profit on disposal during the previous three-year PSR cycle whereas Newcastle made just £12m in the same period.

Clubs like Liverpool, who Newcastle face at St James' Park on Wednesday night, have admittedly started from a much higher base, but the Reds have traded well. Take Sepp van der Berg and Fabio Carvalho, for instance, who had only made 25 appearances combined for the club, but ended up banking Liverpool a huge profit after joining Brentford for £40m. No wonder Newcastle sporting director Paul Mitchell said there were 'a lot of good learnings in Liverpool's practices'.

Last summer was far from a one-off. In fact, Liverpool generated £197.6m through player sales in the previous four years. Going back further, even when Liverpool lost a key figure like Philippe Coutinho, in 2018, the money was smartly reinvested and enabled the club to go again and sign Virgil van Dijk and Alisson.

Liverpool's superior revenues - the club's commercial income (£272m) was greater than Newcastle's overall turnover (£250.3m) in the last set of published accounts - also enable the league leaders to pay bigger wages and that is particularly significant as the higher a club's salary bill, the more points they traditionally pick up per game. Newcastle and Aston Villa bucked that trend to qualify for the Champions League, in 2023 and 2024 respectively, but staying up there is another matter entirely.

"That's the challenge for us and it isn't easy in a PSR world," Howe added. "Everything is different and will continue to be different for a period of time for us so it's about being as smart as we can with anything that we do."