Sky Sports have been on their favourite subject yet again today, how all the best Newcastle United players will be leaving this summer.
Along with pretty much all the rest of the media, the broadcaster seeing it as inevitable that all of the club’s stars will leave.
Sky Sports (and the rest) putting out the message that all of the best Newcastle United players will want to leave Tyneside AND it is inevitable that the club won’t be able to keep them.
Journalists and pundits talk like it is fact, that this will be just a continuation of what (supposedly) has been happening in recent years at St James’ Park.
That year after year following the takeover, some of the best Newcastle United players have been desperate to leave and that this is what has (supposedly) inevitably come to pass.
Sky Sports presenter Mark McAdam the latest to get this completely wrong.
As today McAdam declaring: “Newcastle United fans are not going to like it but they have had experience, unfortunately, of losing some of their best players.”
Personally, I think that Sky Sports (and the rest) talk so often about how it is supposedly inevitable that the best Newcastle United players are going to leave St James’ Park, they have now subconsciously convinced themselves that this has actually happened any number of times.
Every season since the Newcastle United takeover, we have had endless speculation on which of the best United players will leave in the next transfer window. Predictably, time after time naming the usual suspects as the Premier League clubs that will take away our best players to London and/or the North West.
Across nine transfer windows under Eddie Howe and these NUFC owners, how many of the best Newcastle United players have wanted to leave AND ended up joining another club?
Obviously there has been a lot of speculation about the best Newcastle United players wanting leave and for sure be signing for new clubs…
Obviously as well, almost all of this speculation having been invented by the media and repeated by the rest of them endlessly!
Obviously though….in these nine transfer windows, the number of Newcastle United players who have wanted to leave and joined another club, is precisely ONE!
No prizes for naming him, as the rat dominated the entire summer of 2025, for Sky Sports and their friends.
The media and fans can all endlessly speculate about what players are thinking, what they supposedly want to do, clubs they are desperate to leave, clubs they are desperate to join.
However, all we have is that inconvenient thing to really go on, you know, reality. What has actually happened.
Alexander Isak is the only player so far who decided he wanted to leave Newcastle United AND then joined another club.
He is the only one, nobody else.
Neither Elliot Anderson nor Yankuba Minteh wanted to leave Newcastle United, the club hierarchy forced them out to cover the financial shortfall caused by their incompetence. A PSR crisis that developed during the time Amanda Staveley and Darren Eales were running the club.
All of the other Newcastle United players who have left during this Eddie Howe era, it has been the manager’s choice, the club’s choice, not the player forcing it.
How many times have we been told that these are leaving for sure? The likes of Bruno, Tino Livramento, Lewis Hall, Anthony Gordon, Sandro Tonali?
Yet, they are still at St James’ Park. Others such as Trippier, Miley, Joelinton and others have also been supposedly set to leave, there were even claims Malick Thiaw would be forcing his way out in the January 2026 window only months after joining NUFC, due to what a success he had proved under Eddie Howe and getting back into the Germany squad.
Maybe one or more of the best Newcastle United players will leave in summer 2026, or maybe they won’t.
One thing for certain though. When Sky Sports and others go on like it is a foregone conclusion due to what has happened in the past under Eddie Howe, it is simply not based on reality.
Another aspect that the media repeatedly choose to ignore, is that one thing the Newcastle United hierarchy have been very good at, is ensuring there is no contract pressure to sell any of their best players.
Liverpool had to pay £130m to get Alexander Isak out of Newcastle United and if for whatever reason any of United’s current star players ended up leaving this summer, any buying club would have to pay top dollar for them.