Sporting director Ross Wilson believes success for Newcastle rests on them being a trading club going forwards after a summer of fluctuating fortunes in the transfer window.
Wilson insisted there was no internal panic on Tyneside despite Anthony Gordon and Sandro Tonali being moved on, although the Scot admitted he was more reluctant to see Bruno Guimarães leave for Arsenal.
Kieran Trippier, another senior player, also departed but Newcastle signed eight players aged 24 or under, with much enthusiasm over the big-money arrivals of Nico González and Matias Fernandez-Pardo.
“If you want to be a successful club in the Premier League, you have to trade players and if you don’t the chances are you won’t be a successful club in the Premier League,” Wilson said.
“This is what we’ve got to do. And if you don’t do it, then just keep the squad you’ve got and forevermore they’ll grow old, achieve less and leave for nothing.”
The outlook is shaped by Newcastle being fined £5.2 million for breaching UEFA’s financial sustainability regulations, with £6m suspended pending future compliance.
They have not qualified for Europe this season and chief financial officer Simon Capper has forecast the club will be “compliant” with the more relaxed Premier League financial rules.
Chief executive David Hopkinson said: “We are going to be consistently and credibly competing for those top prizes. Part of consistently competing means we’ve got to be compliant with the regulatory regime.
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“We negotiated what we would need to do to be compliant and we’re really pleased with the outcome we got but we’ve got to stick to that agreement and that’s something we knew coming into this summer.”
As well as the turnover of players, Newcastle received another blow when Eddie Howe stepped down and was replaced by Matthias Jaissle, who has enjoyed an unbeaten start to his reign in the league.
Wilson said: “I think we want Newcastle United to be a club with anticipation and excitement. If we’re not it probably means we’re doing it wrong.
“[This summer] never felt chaotic inside. There is no point us pretending otherwise — we did not want to lose Bruno Guimarães. That was really disappointing that we got to that place in the end.
“We were happy where we got to in terms of numbers but that was not part of our plan. But everything else that happened during the window was part of the plan.”
Wilson took up his post in the north-east last October and he revealed he had spent a lot of time since then planning managerial contingencies in the months leading up to Howe’s resignation in July.
“Eddie is an exceptionally talented coach and at some point that meant he was probably going to do something else at some point and we had to be prepared for that,” Wilson added.
“It didn’t feel painful. Clearly the timing was not one we had planned for. But we had a plan in place which is why we executed it as quickly as we did.
“It might have caught some people off guard but the reason we could move so quickly on it was because we had prepared for a number of months.”
