Newcastle United coach issues warning when discussing player departures and potential arrivals this summer

The club’s academy retained list stated that under-23s players Tom Allan, Ryan Barrett, Brad Cross, Oisin McEntee, Regan Thomson, Jake Turner, Adam Wilson and Mo Sangare would all be released from the club.

McEntee will join Walsall upon the expiration of his contract while the others are free to find new clubs.

Meanwhile, Matthew Bondswell, Niall Brookwell, Will Brown, Lewis Cass, Joe Oliver and Dylan Stephenson have been offered new deals.

Under-18 scholars Harry Barclay, Kyle Crossley, James Huntley, Jamie Miley, Michael Ndiweni and Joshua Stewart have all been offered professional deals while Piotr Banda, Liam Chrystal, Joel Green, Josh Nicholson and Nathan Robertson will leave the club.

And Newcastle under-23s lead player development coach Elliott Dickman has delivered a warning to the club’s young players progressing through the ranks.

"Some players have played their last game for us but some are still under contract and will be coming back,” Dickman said. “It's a big pre-season for these players coming up and it's important that one or two might need a bit of a break and a change from the routine.

"But when they're back they need to make sure they hit the ground running because if they don't then they might not play a lot of football."

The under-18s players offered professional contracts are likely to step up into the under-23s set-up next season but Dickman hasn’t ruled out external recruitment bolstering The Young Magpies’ squad.

“We have got a group stepping up from the under-18s but, at the end of the day, it will be whatever our recruitment team finds,” he added. “If there are players out there who are going to come into our group then brilliant and that will help us.

"If not, then we work with the group that we've got and try our best to make sure that we are developing and improving these players.”

Newcastle United’s under-23s side finished eighth out of 14 teams in the Premier League 2 Division 2 table in 2021-22 and were beaten 3-2 by Blyth Spartans in the Northumberland Senior Cup final at St James’s Park earlier this month.

The under-18s had a difficult campaign as they finished bottom of the Premier League under-18s North division, losing their final three games of the campaign against Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool by an aggregate score of 24-0.

But Dickman has stressed that standards will be raised at the academy.

“The players have got to take responsibility and ourselves as a staff will certainly be driving those standards and continue to drive those standards,” he continued.

“To be fair to the staff within the under-23 programme and the academy programme, the standards are high here and the group we’ve had here, [the players] have got to be careful that they don’t get left behind because things change quickly in football.

"The programme that Steve [Harper] has and Neil [Winskill] and Mark [Atkinson] have in place is exceptional. We're working hard and trying our best to implement this with the group that we've got.

"But the big thing is these players have got to take a little bit more responsibility for their own performance and way of doing things but we'll definitely, definitely be onto them moving forward in terms of what that looks like.”

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