Is this now proving to be the worst piece of Newcastle United transfer business ever conducted by the club?
Sometimes you get the most clarity when seeing it from the eyes of others, those who aren’t of a black and white persuasion.
Daniel Taylor is a senior writer for The Athletic and he also happens to be a lifelong Nottingham Forest fan.
This is what he’s had to say about Elliot Anderson moving to Manchester City for £116m: “It is, quite simply, the greatest piece of transfer business in the history of Nottingham Forest…just consider the background of Anderson’s £116m move to Manchester City. He was valued at a mere £15m when Forest somehow conjured up a transfer package with Newcastle United that took the club’s third-choice goalkeeper, Odysseas Vlachodimos, to St James’ Park with a valuation of around £20m (an incredible deal on its own). And now, two seasons on, Anderson has gone for a profit of more than £100m.”
Daniel Taylor adding: “He will go with the best wishes of everyone at the City Ground after playing superbly in Forest’s colours and, at the same time, establishing himself as a regular England international. The profit, meanwhile, should help Forest in their pursuit of Bergvall from Spurs, having targeted him as the player they want to take Anderson’s place in midfield. Other signings will inevitably follow. It will be difficult, of course, to replace a player of Anderson’s gifts. If Forest use the money wisely, however, the team can end up stronger for it. The whole club can be, in fact.”
As the man from The Athletic says, this is clearly the greatest ever piece of transfer business in the history of Nottingham Forest.
A perspective that surely then proves Elliot Anderson is also the worst ever piece of transfer business in the history of Newcastle United.
It seems incredible that the Newcastle United owners and those who were running the club on a day to day basis, CEO Darren Eales and Amanda Staveley (who had a management contract to help run the club at the time), allowed such a nightmare PSR scenario to develop AND then didn’t even ensure that a sell-on clause was included in the Elliot Anderson sale, nor you would imagine in Minteh’s sale either.
It smacks surely of just how truly desperate the PSR position was at the time for NUFC and nobody has ever held their hands up to take responsibility and explain exactly what the ‘plan’ had been.
Daniel Taylor fails to give the full background to the Elliot Anderson move from Newcastle United, it doesn’t make the situation any less disastrous but for full understanding, people need to know what happened.
In the middle of June 2024 it was suddenly made public that to remain inside the three-year rolling PSR limits and avoid a points deduction, Newcastle United had to make more than £50m pure profit on player sales by the end of June 2024 to go in the 2023/24 accounts.
The book value of a player was all important.
Yankuba Minteh had been bought for £7m in summer 2023 on a reported five year contract. The book value of a player is spread over the course of his contract so for Minteh his book value reduced by around £1.4m each year. By summer 2024 his book value would have been roughly £5.6m (£7m less £1.4m). This meant that the pure profit that went into the Newcastle United 2023/24 accounts when he was sold to Brighton for £33m, was £33m less Minteh’s book value (£5.6m) at the time. So that would have meant £27.4m profit going into the NUFC 2023/24 accounts, as part of the £50m+ extra profit that was needed to avoid PSR issues.
With Elliot Anderson, it was even better. He was homegrown and so had not been bought for any transfer fee, so his book value was £0. All of the £35m transfer fee Newcastle United received for Anderson could be put in the 2023/24 NUFC accounts as pure profit. Added to the £27.4m pure profit for Minteh, the £62.4m was more than enough to sort the £50m+ PSR shortfall.
However, Nottingham Forest also had PSR issues to sort by the end of June 2024, they needed to bring in some extra pure profit from player sales. Though a far smaller amount than Newcastle United and so they (Forest) were in a dominant position when it came to doing a deal.
Newcastle United reportedly tried to get one of a number of other Forest players as part of the PSR swap/sale arrangement, Morgan Gibbs-White and Anthony Elanga said to be amongst those United enquired about. Forest said no and Newcastle United in their desperation took somebody they didn’t want and who Forest were happy to get rid of.
Forest had paid a reported £5m for Odysseas Vlachodimos in summer 2023 on a five year contract, so by summer 2024 his book value was £4m (his original £5m transfer fee reducing by £1m per season across his five year contract).
So in the double transfer arrangement, Newcastle United agreed to pay £20m for Vlachodimos. This meant Forest banked £16m (£20m less £4m book value) pure profit to go in their 2023/24 accounts to help sort their PSR short-term problem. Their £35m paid for Elliot Anderson over a five year contract meant they had to put a small portion of that (no more than £7m as his book value would come down by that amount each of the five years of his contract) into the 2023/24 accounts. So a net pure profit for their 2023/24 accounts of around £9n/£10m (£16m pure profit from Vlachodimos sale, less £7m for Anderson). Clearly this double deal meant that Forest sorted their PSR short-terms issues ahead of the 30 June 2024 deadline for that three year period.
Newcastle United had paid £20m for a goalkeeper they didn’t want but had felt forced to take him to do the double deal, or else face the prospect of breaking the PSR restrictions.
Vlachodimos arrived on a four year contract and so in the 2023/24 accounts, his immediate cost to go into those accounts was no more than £5m (his £20m fee coming down £5m per season across his four year contract).
So the £62.4m pure profit for the 2023/24 Newcastle United accounts then needed £5m deducted for the cost of Vlachodimos that had to go into that season’s accounts, meaning roughly an extra net £57m pure profit had been generated from player trading by the end of June 2024 (All of these transfer figures are rough estimates based on what has been reported and calculating the book value of a player at any one time is even more complicated than laid out above, but as a general overview this is what happened between the two clubs and at these ballpark figures I have used).
So that is what happened.
It explains why Newcastle United ended up with a ‘£20m’ goalkeeper they didn’t want and who has never started a competitive game for NUFC and why Nottingham Forest are making a huge profit on an England midfielder who has been exceptional for them these past two seasons.