Darren Eales frustration after Newcastle United agree club record transfer

The Magpies sold Yankuba Minteh to Brighton & Hove Albion for £33million and academy product Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest for a joint club-record sale of £35million. The deals completed before the June 30 PSR deadline helped Newcastle comply with the rules and avoid a potential points deduction.

While Eales admitted the club ‘love’ Anderson and ideally would have looked to keep him, in a PSR world where academy sales are viewed as ‘pure profit’ in the calculations, it was a deal that made the most sense. And in that is a problem with PSR.

"On all of these things, we are compliant,” Eales confirmed. “We did what we needed to do.

"Look, you know what the market is like, there will always be noise around any sort of transfer deadline. For us, it was one of those situations where we knew what we had to get to. It's one of the unintended consequences of PSR that is incentivises the sale of either homegrown players or players that have got a low book value.

“I think that's something that no-one ever foresaw when the rules came in over 10 years ago now. I do think that's something everyone is pretty unified that we need to look at because it's a bit perverse that you would take players who are part of the culture, homegrown players who fans love, and you're almost incentivised in terms of when you're trying to maximise that PSR headroom.

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“But in the end we had to do the deals that were right for the club, that made us compliant. So, from that perspective, we did what we had to do. But we kept what I would say are our core players, the type of players like [Alexander] Isak, [Anthony] Gordon, Bruno [Guimaraes], Joelinton - those players who are our core.”

Newcastle now look ahead to strengthening the squad for the new 2024-25 season with Eales confirming that transfer funds are there for head coach Eddie Howe to spend.

"Now it's a case of okay, with that new cycle ahead of us now, how can we look to strengthen?” How can we look to go to the next level?"