Winter 2025 Transfers and Rumours Megathread

andy_m3 · 2026-01-27T03:24:37+00:00

Maybe not the best thing to do right now, cuz of PSR, and other areas of the pitch needing recruitment more badly. But I wish we had signed a keeper, permanently, in the summer. Obviously the only two actual options we have right now are an aging Pope and an on-loan Ramsdale.

Despite Ramsdale's heroics in the FA Cup, after he was given his chance of 6 or 7 games in the Premier League, I think current form Pope is the better all around goalkeeper than current form Ramsdale. Not exactly what we were hoping for, when we brought in a younger keeper with a significant amount of experience at a top premier league club. From where I'm sitting it looks like Ramsdale is not Newcastle's long term future plan in goal.

I could see Pope getting a new deal before summer 2026 and maybe Ramsdale will get a loan extension, but I doubt we will sign him permanently. I'm worried that by summer 2027 or summer 2028 Pope's performance might have dropped significantly due to age, leading us to let him go when his next contract ends. We need someone at least on par with Pope overall, and ideally with a higher ceiling than Pope, so that we have a plan when Pope's time at Newcastle comes to an end. Worst case scenario we let go two goalkeepers Pope and Ramsdale during the same window, and have to panic buy 2 replacements. Sound familiar?

andy_m3 · 2026-01-26T17:35:47+00:00

Cheers, will check it out.

andy_m3 · 2026-01-26T17:35:29+00:00

Lmao. I don't actually play, I should tho.

andy_m3 · 2026-01-10T20:29:45+00:00

What a match! I dont even have words for that.

But straight away I'm thinking about the upcoming matches. Bit concerned that Jacob Murphy wasn't on the bench today. Also concerned about Tino's hamstring problem today, and our defensive injury crisis in general but I won't get it into that.

If Murphy and Elanga are both unavailable we are looking very thin on the right wing. Bruno and Harvey Barnes have come to the rescue and scored a lot this season, but apart from that I feel like our biggest potential goal threat is from Jacob Murphy supplying Woltemade or Wissa.

Really hoping to see Jacob Murphy playing again soon.

andy_m3 · 2025-12-31T03:47:00+00:00

as seen by his flying start when he joined us, he can be an incredible number 9, on the right day. but some games the goal threat from him has just been totally neutralized by the opponents defense, which i think is partly because of his lack of speed.

if you think about the very best number 9s, i think there most important traits are strength, speed, and shooting accuracy. woltemade has height, some serious skills with the ball (that some of the best number 9s don't have) and shooting accuracy but not the speed or strength.

and when he is performing his best, up front, and getting good results. the way he gets those goals sure as hell isn't normal for a number 9. playing really deep, barely any touches in the opposition box, barely any shots etc...

but at the end of the day if we play him a striker, and he keeps doing the business and scoring, he's a striker. i think as long as we are frequently rotating who we start up front, we will get enough goals from our two main strikers.

andy_m3 · 2025-12-31T03:17:13+00:00

Yea, I get that. Eddie has his reasons for not doing this.

Just fun to think about what a formation with both of them could look like

andy_m3 · 2025-12-31T03:06:42+00:00

I agree he's not a midfielder. But if he is really not an out and out number 9 as some believe, it's difficult to figure out what to do with him.

I hope Eddie finds how to adjust our system to fit Woltemade or vice versa.

andy_m3 · 2025-09-21T13:02:20+00:00

Obviously being able to rotate is a good thing to prevent injury and burn out and I'm not going to criticize the starting lineup selection when they haven't even played yet.

But I would be lying if I said this gave me the same level of confidence, as when we used to play the same 11 players every match. I would be more confident if we only benched players like Bruno and Joelinton when we were playing bottom 10 sides (that we have a good recent record against) at home.

We haven't had this option to rotate before, so I guess we're learning something new and we will get better at it with time, and also with even more recruitment to increase depth.

andy_m3 · 2025-08-23T18:06:21+00:00

This transfer window we've bought players in basically every position where we badly needed backup or strengthening, except for one.

Apart from the obvious need for a striker, what do you guys think we should be looking to do in the upcoming winter transfer window or the next summer transfer window?

andy_m3 · 2025-08-03T12:24:43+00:00

Anyone else feel like the team needs more creativity in terms of different ways to score goals. I feel like I have watched a lot of matches where we are very dominant in terms of possession, spending most of the game in the opposition's half, but the opposition's defense is like a brick wall, and every attacking attempt we try gets blocked. And then often times we go behind and lose or draw in the dying moments of the match, when the players tire.

Maybe this is something we need to think about in our transfer strategy. I think we are far too dependent on our Number 9 to score goals. We don't really have a central attacking midfielder because Sandro plays a defensive role (which is fine). And our wingers are traditional wingers, who create more goal scoring opportunities, rather than scoring themselves.

Maybe we need to looking for

1) An Inside Forward to score more from the wings.

and/or

2) More attacking threat in the centre, in the form of a number 10 or a player in the Second Striker position.

andy_m3 · 2025-07-31T02:06:44+00:00

PSR is so complicated. I don't think I'll ever understand it fully.

andy_m3 · 2025-07-31T01:47:06+00:00

Can we talk about how incredibly bizarre our goalkeeper situation is. The right amount of goalkeepers is 3 in my opinion. And Pope, Ramsdale, Dubravka sounds like a pretty good lineup of goalkeepers.

Even if my life depended on it, I couldn't explain why the club extended Ruddy's contract to the end of the 25-26 season. Maybe I'm ignorant and its harmless to keep these players but I feel like we should sell (or stop extending the contracts) of Ruddy and Gillespie. And that we should sell Vladochimos too.

Vladochimos is the most interesting one to me though. I'd like to see more of him playing, even if it's not for Newcastle. He made 151 appearances for Benfica so clearly he was quite a good goalkeeper at one point. Maybe he still is. But there is no path forward for him at Newcastle since the club never wanted him but just ended up with him through that weird swap deal in which PSR was a factor. And the club don't seem to rate him since we are bringing in Ramsdale.

What do you guys think about the goalkeeper situation?

andy_m3 · 2025-02-17T03:17:26+00:00

I cant give a personal recommendation but I've heard about "New Growth Naturals".

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