Elliot Anderson is a very good football player.
Elliot Anderson isn’t as good as Sandro Tonali or Bruno Guimaraes.
Both of these statements are true.
This isn’t me wanting to do Elliot Anderson down, quite the opposite.
He simply isn’t as good a player, not yet anyway, as Sandro Tonali and Bruno Guimaraes who are top class established players for club and country.
Yet we have a situation now where it seems that Elliot Anderson could this summer break the record for the biggest transfer fee ever paid by a Premier League club.
Whilst at the same time in the media, so many journalists wanting to claim that Sandro Tonali could leave Newcastle United this summer for around half of whatever Elliot Anderson is expected to go for.
I find the whole thing very bizarre.
I think a number of things are in play here, a lot of factors.
Nottingham Forest have Manchester City over a barrel. Even though they have no manager currently in place, Manchester City clearly have decided they need to have Elliot Anderson at any cost. Rodri turns 30 next week and I don’t think he is anywhere the same level now as he was before getting injured, so it appears that those in charge at Man City see the 23-year-old Forest midfielder as the one who can come in and be their key player in the middle of the pitch for many years to come.
With the way football finances and allowed spending are set up these days for the various clubs, plus seemingly there never to be any conclusion to the 115 Premier League charges they are accused of, it means Manchester City can continue to do whatever they want. So if Elliot Anderson ends up costing them more the £125m/£130m (depending on which reports you read) than Alexander Isak did Liverpool, Manchester City won’t really care if they get the player they clearly want to anchor their midfield. A deal totalling £122m reported to have already been turned down by Nottingham Forest and Manchester City needing to offer more than the Alexander Isak transfer before negotiations can even start.
Elliot Anderson is a very good player and I think it was a shocker that the incompetence of the Newcastle United owners and senior staff (Amanda Staveley who had a management contract in the years leading up to the forced sale and Darren Eales who was the CEO in the years leading up to it) led to the lifelong NUFC fan getting sold to Forest due to the urgent PSR crisis that became public in June 2024.
At the same time though, what exactly has Elliot Anderson shown for all the media to blindly go along with the idea that he is suddenly the best and most valuable football player in the Premier League?
I think he fully deserves his place in the England team and the Geordie midfielder is for me a very tidy classy player, who does the simple stuff really well, but he is more David Batty than Paul Gascoigne. Elliot Anderson doesn’t score or create a lot of goals and indeed has only scored six goals at the top level in all competitions.
Newcastle United
The bottom line is that Elliot Anderson would have been behind Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro Tonali in the pecking order in the 2024/25 Newcastle United season AND moving forward to the present day, he still would be behind the United pair.
That isn’t a slur on Elliot Anderson, it is just fact that the Newcastle United duo are elite midfield players, even better than the Geordie midfielder.
I think reality is that if the PSR forced sale hadn’t happened, Elliot Anderson would have eventually become first choice at Newcastle United ahead of Joelinton, playing alongside Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro Tonali, NOT instead of either of that duo.
After Elliot Anderson left, the 2024/25 season was Newcastle United’s best in living memory for the vast majority of fans. United won the Carabao Cup and finished top five, qualifying for the Champions League a second time in three years.
Everybody agreed that key to the Wembley win was the fact that the Newcastle United midfield trio completely outclassed and outplayed Liverpool’s midfield.
The run to Wembley was also largely down to the United midfielders and the same with the excellent 2024/25 Premier League campaign. In the 2024/25 season, Newcastle United played 48 matches in all competitions with Bruno Guimaraes playing in 47 of the 48, Sandro Tonali 45 of the 48, Joelinton 37 of the 48.
Many journalists are desperate to now claim that Sandro Tonali’s value is little more than the £55m Newcastle United paid for him three years ago. It is ridiculous as these last two seasons he has proved himself an exceptional player and 2025/26 he was asked/needed to do far too much, especially when Bruno Guimaraes was missing due to injury for a couple of key months. As well as being Italy’s best player and starting all of their internationals, Sandro Tonali played in 53 of Newcastle’s 58 games last season. We all know the issues we had last season, especially up front. Tonali held the midfield together and without him I dread to think what would have happened.
Sandro Tonali is a better player and worth at least as much as Elliot Anderson, certainly I would be astonished if Newcastle United were to sell the Italian for much less than £100m, IF he did leave. Sadly, some Newcastle United fans have dug such a deep hole of negativity that they want to do down anybody currently at the club still, especially when it comes to Eddie Howe and some of our very best players. Put it this way, any honest Newcastle United fan would still want Bruno and Tonali in the team ahead of Anderson. As I said earlier though, of course the ideal would still have been if all three could be here at St James’ Park.
When it comes to the dominant Premier League clubs and what they are willing to pay for English players, there is a significant surcharge they are happy to pay for various reasons. So you could maybe argue that Elliot Anderson has a similar market value at present to Sandro Tonali, also taking into account the fact that the Italian is two and a half years older. Bruno Guimaraes is a brilliant player and is higher quality than Elliot Anderson but the Brazilian is five years older. Whatever Bruno’s market value now he is 28, he is priceless when it comes to his value at Newcastle United
I think my main message is, as Newcastle United fans we need to value the elite players we still have at the club, rather than focusing too much on the likes of Isak and Anderson (and Gordon now) who have left.
In the five matches between the two clubs since Elliot Anderson left, Newcastle United have won four of the five and drawn the other. Bruno Guimaraes and/or Sandro Tonali have won the midfield battle in each of these five games and that includes that most recent draw, Elliot Anderson scored a great solo goal late on to snatch a fortunate point for Forest but Newcastle had been better in the middle of the pitch.