Jarrod Bowen could be set to leave West Ham United this summer and Newcastle United are reported to be interested in signing him.
How much substance there is in this remains to be seen.
If West Ham get relegated, the financial situation would surely mean they’d have to sell their top earner and one of their few players who could command a high transfer fee, whilst you’d also believe that Jarrod Bowen himself would be wanting to stay in the Premier League.
Even if they survive on the final day of the season, such is the financial black hole that the Hammers face, they may still willingly want to sell the England international.
As for Jarrod Bowen himself, he has been at West Ham for six and a half years now and may fancy moving on even if relegation is avoided, with the Hammers almost certainly set for a tough 2026/27 Premier League season if they dodge the Championship.
I wanted to look at this purely from a Newcastle United perspective though.
From everything I see and hear, Newcastle United fans universally appear to believe that Jarrod Bowen would be a great signing this summer, if it happened.
Conundrum
I find this an interesting conundrum.
The idea that Jarrod Bowen would be a great signing, yet at the same time, the same Newcastle United fans (in most cases I am assuming) adamant that Yoane Wissa was always a ridiculous signing that should never have even been considered in summer 2025.
Yoane Wissa arrived in late August 2025 just before he was set to turn 29 years of age in the September.
Jarrod Bowen will turn 30 years of age in December (2026).
This is where hindsight massively comes into play for many Newcastle United fans, what they are claiming now.
The idea that Yoane Wissa was always going to be a disastrous signing, my memory tells me that this most definitely wasn’t the universal belief last summer. With Callum Wilson coming to the end of his time at Newcastle and then the Alexander Isak situation coming to light, my memory tells me that Newcastle fans generally thought that Yoane Wissa could potentially be a sensible signing as a Premier League proven quality versatile attacking player/striker, especially if Isak was sold or continued his refusal to play or train after the summer 2025 transfer window closed.
Two things everybody should agree on now.
Firstly, Newcastle United ended up having to overpay on Yoane Wissa due to the situation they found themselves in. A reported £52m transfer fee plus a possible £3m in future add-ons.
Secondly, the serious injury that Yoane Wissa suffered has massively impacted his first season at Newcastle United, something especially negative due to his age and the fact he was signed for immediate impact and certainly not as a key long-term option beyond an initial three, maybe four, years at the club.
Jarrod Bowen has an excellent record in the Premier League of creating and scoring goals but he would be even older than Yoane Wissa was when he signed for NUFC, would cost a similar transfer fee as Wissa did, whilst as West Ham’s top earner on a reported near £10m per season (£200,000 a week) his wages would be far higher than Newcastle are paying Yoane Wissa. Assuming/hoping they are still at St James’ Park, Jarrod Bowen arriving on that kind of wage deal would also surely mean that the likes of Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro Tonali would need their wages raised to at least that level as well.
Then imagine if Jarrod Bowen signs for Newcastle United but before able to kick a competitive ball in anger he picks up a serious injury, that at the very least seriously impacts his first season at NUFC?
I can guarantee you that many of these same Newcastle United fans who are currently saying what a brilliant addition Jarrod Bowen would be, they’d be suddenly calling out the decision to sign him as a woeful one.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
As it happens, I think there is zero chance of Newcastle United signing Jarrod Bowen, even if he was leaving West Ham.
They were very one-off circumstances last summer that saw Newcastle United deviate from their normal transfer strategy.
After the very first relegation fighting transfer window of January 2022, Newcastle United hadn’t paid a transfer fee for an outfield player who was aged over 25 until Yoane Wissa was signed. Indeed, all of the other four players who were bought in last summer were aged under 25.
Yoane Wissa when signing for Newcastle United
Aged 28 when Newcastle United signed him, in his last three seasons at Brentford, Wissa had only missed three Premier League matches due to injury.
More importantly, in 35 Premier League appearances across the 2024/25 season, Yoane Wissa scored 19 goals for unfashionable Brentford. The most goals scored by any PL striker in 2024/25 who didn’t take penalties.
Yoane Wissa had scored 45 Premier League goals in his four seasons with Brentford, whilst playing 8,315 PL minutes, at an average of a goal every 184 PL minutes. A goal in just over the equivalent of every two matches.
That only tells part of the story though because in at least half his starts for Brentford, Yoane Wissa wasn’t playing centre-forward. Playing left wing, number 10 and so on, a very versatile attacking player, Ivan Toney amongst those who were playing centre-forward instead.
Even better, when you looked at the more recent stats, once Yoane Wissa was mainly playing through the middle, just look…
Remember, none of these were penalties. When you look at the 2024/25 season and the later stages of the 2023/24 one, the last 48 Premier League appearances for Brentford had seen Yoane Wissa score 27 PL goals.
Yoane Wissa has proved to be a disastrous signing for Newcastle United, so far, but from everything we knew about him before he signed, there was every reason to believe he could succeed and score goals. I think he would have done if not picking up that injury. We will just never know for sure though, either way.
What I do know is that if Yoane Wissa is at Newcastle United next season, he won’t be playing alongside Jarrod Bowen. NUFC won’t be deviating from that usual transfer strategy as they felt forced to do for Wissa, there will be no more big transfer fees paid this summer for players who have most of their first team careers behind them.