The summer 2025 transfer window has become something that is at the heart of pretty much every Newcastle United discussion.
What went wrong?
Who is to blame?
What should happen now?
Taking that last question first, the answer for a section of Newcastle United fans is to sack Eddie Howe.
The reasoning put forward is that he was in charge of the summer 2025 transfer window, he was responsible for all of the players signed last summer, so Eddie Howe is the one who should be held responsible and be replaced.
Simple as that.
Or…is that too simple?
May 2025
As the 2024/25 season was coming to a close, this is what Eddie Howe had to say ahead of the summer 2025 transfer window which was opening on 1 June 2025:
“You need to act quickly because usually the best available options will move quickly. If you are too late to react, you can miss out on potential transfers that could make the difference. We pride ourselves on identifying our targets quickly and then we have to act quickly as a football club.”
Sunday 25 May 2025
After overseeing the conclusion of United’s progress into the Champions League on Sunday, despite the loss to Everton, Eddie Howe had this to say at his post-match press conference. This was minutes before heading into a summer 2025 transfer window recruitment conversation with Newcastle United Chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan and other senior members of the Saudi Arabia PIF majority ownership, along with Jamie Reuben representing the Reuben family minority NUFC ownership:
“As far as I’m aware, we do not have any PSR issues heading into this deadline…We are looking to reverse what we did last summer. This time, we are in a strong position ourselves where we’ll be looking to make additions to the squad. I will have a discussion with the chairman and representatives from PIF today, and I’m looking forward to that. We will be trying to lay some foundations for what lies ahead in the summer. In terms of timings and everything that follows that, I don’t know, but the planning and all the things that go on behind the scenes have been there for a number of weeks now. We have been working hard to try to set things up for what we need to do.”
So Eddie Howe had made absolutely clear what his position was.
The Newcastle United Head Coach stating that he and the rest of the recruitment team had over a period of time established who their top targets for the summer 2025 transfer window were. Eddie Howe stating that it was imperative that the club needed to move ASAP for these top transfer targets.
Eddie Howe set to go into this Sunday 25 May 2025 meeting with the Newcastle United owners to get the backing and support for these key signings to be made ASAP.
The summer 2025 transfer window opens on 1 June 2025
Newcastle United fans eagerly waiting to see who these early signings would be, which top targets the Newcastle United owners would deliver from Eddie Howe’s carefully prepared lists.
Other Premier League clubs moved quickly and signed players, not Newcastle United though.
We reached July and the Newcastle United owners not having delivered a single signing.
The first player who was bought in the summer 2025 transfer window by Newcastle United, Anthony Elanga on 11 July 2025, the 41st day of that summer window.
The Premier League season was kicking off for Newcastle United on Saturday 16 August 2025 with a very tough visit to Aston Villa, with then a home match the following weekend against reigning champions Liverpool. Even more important to have a perfect summer of preparation with such a tough start.
The Newcastle United owners delivered the second buy of summer 2025 on Tuesday 12 August 2025, Malick Thiaw signed exactly four days before the new season kicked off. This was the 73rd day of the summer transfer window.
Sunday 17 August 2025, the day after an opening day goalless draw at Aston Villa, it was announced that the Newcastle United owners had signed Jacob Ramsey from Villa. The season already kicked off and this the 78th day of the summer 2025 window.
Monday 30 August 2025 we saw Nick Woltemade signed, the 91st day of the summer 2025 window.
Then 1 September 2025 it was Yoane Wissa arriving, the Newcastle United owners signing him on the 93rd and final say of the summer 2025 transfer window.
With a goalkeeper desperately needed, none was bought. Though Aaron Ramsdale had arrived on loan on 2 August 2025, the 63rd day of the summer 2025 window, two weeks before the season would kick off.
Remember
Remember what Eddie Howe had made clear back in May 2025. The need to move ASAP for his top targets, or else things could become seriously challenging.
Newcastle United went on a pre-season training camp to Austria. That followed by a major pre-season tour to South Korea and Japan. Anthony Elanga was the only summer 2025 new signing to go on these trips with his new teammates.
Bear in mind as well that summer 2025 saw the following Newcastle United players leave: Isak, Dubravka, Hayden, Targett, Longstaff, Wilson, Vlachodimos and Lewis.
Whilst since summer 2023 when Newcastle United had last signed any first team contenders, in the windows following that, we had also seen the following leave NUFC: Dummett, Almiron, Kelly, Manquillo, Hendrick, Fraser, Karius, Ritchie, Anderson and Minteh.
The Newcastle United squad had been absolutely stripped to the bone ahead of this huge summer 2025 transfer window. Quality signings needed to be made ASAP as Eddie Howe had made clear AND there had to be plenty of them.
Collective amnesia
For those who lazily want to blame everything on Eddie Howe, despite all of the above, we then have even more factors to add.
The summer 2025 transfer window saw the Newcastle United owners failing to have a Sporting Director in place, with Paul Mitchell leaving and no replacement brought in.
Whilst there was also no CEO in place. In September 2024, the club had announced Darren Eales would be replaced ASAP as he had been diagnosed with a chronic form of blood cancer. The reality though would be that no replacement would arrive until fully 12 months later, David Hopkinson starting work in September 2025, with no CEO working across that summer 2025 transfer window.
The worst case of collective amnesia though for Eddie Howe’s uber critics, is the Alexander Isak situation.
The Newcastle United owners having repeatedly made clear across the media that they had no intention of selling Alexander Isak, even though he and his agent stated time after time he would never play for NUFC again and went on strike refusing to train or play for the club.
How can people forget Eddie Howe at press conference after press conference throughout summer 2025, still waiting for these promised essential ASAP summer signings to arrive, whilst being relentless quizzed about Alexander Isak?
Zero support from the Newcastle United owners, no senior staff stepping forward, Eddie Howe left to deal with all this nonsense by himself.
Summer 2025 had become a total shambles, the Newcastle United owners having massively let Eddie Howe down.
Eddie Howe having had to deal with the entire pre-season with only one new buy coming in, with no senior strikers at all. The 2024/25 season kicking off with still total chaos and the shambles continuing.
The Newcastle United owners refusing all summer to allow Alexander Isak to leave, which of course had then played a massive part in no top target new strikers arriving. We then saw the NUFC ownership group arrive on Tyneside for the first home game of the season against Liverpool and then ridiculously make very public that they were going around to Alexander Isak’s house to try and convince him to change his mind and stay. Having been on strike for almost the entire summer, to nobody’s surprise the answer was no. The Newcastle United owners then in the final three days of the transfer window (days 91-93 of the summer 2025 window) agreeing to sell Alexander Isak, with Yoane Wissa and Nick Woltemade arriving.
The idea then…
The idea then that it is Eddie Howe who should be held fully responsible for anything and everything that went wrong in the summer 2025 transfer window, is just beyond belief.
The way some Newcastle United fans talk, you would think that at that 25 May 2025 meeting on the final day of the season, Yasir Al-Rumayyan had agreed to sign all of Eddie Howe’s top targets and that they had all been delivered in June 2025 before pre-season began in July 2025. That Howe had been fully supported and backing across last summer and couldn’t have asked for more.
The reality of course is that Eddie Howe had absolutely done everything he could ahead of summer 2025, he had won NUFC their first domestic trophy in 70 years and had delivered a second Champions League qualification in three years. All of this achieved whilst stripping his first team squad to the bone since the summer 2023 transfer window.
Having reduced his first team squad to such small numbers, you can only imagine how gutted Eddie Howe must have been across that shambles of summer 2025.
Yet he was the consummate professional as always. Refusing to publicly call out the Newcastle United owners, whilst at the same time doing everything he could to protect the players he did have. The preparations for the 2025/26 season understandably becoming all but an impossible challenge and the results in the friendlies summing that up. Losing 4-0 against Celtic, further defeats against Arsenal, Atletico Madrid and a K-League representative eleven. Draws against Spurs and Espanyol.
Can you imagine how managers such as Mikel Arteta and Pep Guardiola would have behaved if they had been so badly let down at their clubs???
Whatever professional public front he was putting on across summer 2025, Eddie Howe must have constantly been privately informing the Newcastle United owners that Alexander Isak obviously had no intention of staying at the club, that they needed to accept they had to sell him ASAP and sign two of his top striker targets to replace both him (Isak) and Wilson.
The way the media and indeed many Newcastle United fans, now present this revisionist narrative, as though Nick Woltemade and Yoane Wissa were his dream signings and not the reality of only days remaining in that summer 2025 window and he had NO senior strikers. Eddie Howe had to deal with the situation as it was, not how he had expected it to be.
Eddie Howe had quite clearly wanted to sign James Trafford for some time and the Newcastle United owners didn’t deliver in early summer 2025. Exactly where Elanga, Ramsey, Thiaw, Woltemade and Wissa were on Howe’s wish list we will never know. However, what we do know absolutely for sure, is that he never envisioned that only one player would be bought in time to have a pre-season AND only the one bought in time to play when the season kicked off.
Signing Wissa and Woltemade was a case of making the best of it and quite clearly the Brentford striker was seen as the last gasp signing when/if Alexander Isak was sold, who was Premier League proven and ready to be thrown straight in. For then him to be seriously injured before he had even played for Newcastle United, was just cruel beyond belief for Eddie Howe. Wissa had a great goalscoring (and fitness!) record with Brentford, playing on the wing and then through the middle in his final 18 months or so with the Bees. Quite clearly the injury wrecked his Newcastle United season and he has struggled to get properly fit and find form when eventually able to play. Without that injury I think Wissa would have done well for Newcastle, at least for a couple of seasons, whereas now you have to wonder what we will ever see of him.
As for Nick Woltemade, I think for sure he was somebody who cropped up as a striker who NUFC learnt could potentially be signed very late in the summer 2025 window. I don’t think he was ever on their radar as a serious target until it became reality that they had to find strikers from somewhere late on.
Eddie Howe was facing this most challenging of seasons across four competitions, so the idea he would have seen Nick Woltemade as his ideal first choice striker signing is simply bizarre. An unorthodox striker who isn’t really an out and out striker, likes to drop off a bit deeper, who had never played in the Premier League before AND arrived at Newcastle United having started a total of only 32 Bundesliga matches in his entire career.
Even when signing Nick Woltemade so late, Eddie Howe will never have envisioned having to start him as soon as he was available for a Premier League match. Which ended up being a month into the season and with Yoane Wissa crocked. In the circumstances, I think both Eddie Howe and Nick Woltemade have made a pretty decent go of it in Big Nick’s first season in England AND the first ever season when he has played anything like this number of games in his career. I am not saying it has been an incredible success but I fail to see how such an inexperienced striker from overseas, scoring ten goals and getting five assists, is some huge failure and should be already totally written off.
My take on the summer 2025 signings that were eventually made, is that Thiaw and Ramsey look really good signings who will be real assets next season. I think Woltemade has done well in the circumstances and could do even better next season with that experience behind him. I have no idea on what will happen with Wissa but hopefully he can sort himself out, whilst with Elanga we have seen some promise so far but not nearly enough times. He needs to step it up next season and based on what he did at Forest, he could well do so in his second season here. As for loan signing Ramsdale, I think he has done ok in the circumstances but isn’t the answer next season.
I think this season has basically been too many games and not enough available players of enough quality in the squad. It has been as much about the limitations at times of players who were already at the club, as it has been about the signings that arrived in summer 2025. So many injuries to key players has been crippling for such a relatively small squad that has needed to play more matches than any club in the major European leagues. The same players having to play every weekend and every midweek, they are never going to be consistently at their best in those circumstances. It is all but inevitable that you will experience a very mixed season of results. As well as the same key players having to start match after match, the numerous injuries (and suspensions) have regularly also left Eddie Howe with a bench offering so few realistic options. This meaning Howe has had to keep his best available players on the pitch far longer than at times he would have preferred, as compared to those clubs with far better strength in depth who have subs of similar quality available to come on and share the minutes.
As for what happened in summer 2025, I don’t think any of the eventual signings were forced on Eddie Howe BUT when it comes to what he ended up with compared to what he reasonably expected, I would be amazed if overall he rated it as better than a 3 or 4 out of 10. Certainly when you factor in how long he had to wait for the transfer business to be done.
When you think back to what the Newcastle United squad needed for this hugely challenging 2025/26 season, it was for sure a case of far too little far too late.
Eddie Howe showed a superb ability to identify quality signings, with the likes of Trippier, Bruno, Burn, Wood, Botman, Barnes, Tonali, Livramento, Hall, Minteh, Gordon, Isak all targeted and the club hierarchy then successfully signing them.
While I don’t think summer 2025 brought the same quality, the same value for money, I don’t think it was Eddie Howe’s judgement that failed. Instead, I believe that the system, the process, of how completing deals was done by the NUFC hierarchy, was shown to be no longer up to the job. Nothing done quickly, everything ending up in the public domain and so many sagas, almost all of them unsuccessful and top targets ending up elsewhere.
With proper backing and support, I see no reason why this summer 2026 we can’t see Eddie Howe reverting to the same levels of success and quality which we have seen with so many of those previous signings.
It was the ‘system’ supporting Eddie Howe that became broken last summer, not Eddie Howe’s judgement.