Inside Newcastle Q&A: Where are the goals coming from? Any January signings?

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During the Premier League season, The Athletic’s Newcastle United subscribers can ask our writers covering the club for their views and insight into what’s happening at St James’ Park.

We have pulled together some of the questions and our answers from Monday’s edition of our Inside Newcastle live Q&A, which included queries about including whether there is capacity to spend in January, when Ross Wilson is expected to arrive as sporting director and how Eddie Howe will compensate for the expected loss of Tino Livramento due to injury.

Want to ask us anything Newcastle-related? Chris Waugh will be back next Monday at 2pm BST (9am EST) for another session.

Did the weekend show that other players need to step up with goals beyond Nick Woltemade? — Peter A

Waugh: Undoubtedly, yes. Will Osula is Newcastle’s top scorer in all competitions with three goals, Woltemade has two and then Bruno Guimaraes is the only other player to find the net in the Premier League.

Anthony Elanga, Anthony Gordon, Joelinton, Harvey Barnes and Jacob Murphy play in attacking positions and need to get themselves into goalscoring areas, alongside creating more opportunities for Woltemade (who has to get himself into the box more, too).

Newcastle’s offensive stats per 90 minutes — 0.7 goals, 0.84 expected goals, 10.3 shots, 2.7 efforts on target and 22.5 touches in the opposition box — are all significantly down on last season. While integrating Woltemade has perhaps exacerbated the diminishment of those returns, the regression also hints at something more fundamental with Newcastle’s attacking set-up.

It is not as if Newcastle are creating loads of chances and missing them. Their recent lack of invention has become concerning.

Yoane Wissa being available after the international break feels significant. He is more of an out-and-out striker than Woltemade and is experienced in the Premier League. But accommodating Wissa requires further adaptation of Newcastle’s attacking style.

A glut of goals against Union Saint-Gilloise and Nottingham Forest may quickly alter perceptions, but right now it feels like there is no short-term fix to Newcastle’s offensive shortcomings.

Where is this Wilson chap, then? — Stuart M

Waugh: As we wrote on July 23, Ross Wilson is expected to be the next sporting director. Howe approves of him and the Nottingham Forest chief football officer advanced through the process, reaching the final stages alongside Jason Ayto, with the latter subsequently joining Brighton & Hove Albion.

The suggested timeline for major announcements was for a CEO to arrive first, with David Hopkinson confirmed earlier this month, before the sporting director, followed in the medium term by the potential site of a new state-of-the-art training ground and a decision on the future of St James’ Park.

As of yet, despite the question being posed to those inside the club regularly, an exact date as to when Wilson (or another sporting director) will arrive has not been given.

While Wilson is expected to join, it is not a fait accompli. Newcastle and Forest still need to agree on his release, should he indeed accept the job (the soundings at this end are that they believe he wants to), and there may be a period of notice to serve.

Senior figures on the footballing side have yet to be told when a sporting director will be in place, either, with the interim structure, which presently contains a vacuum at the top of footballing operations, still in place.

Getting a sporting director in place well before the January window is definitely in the club’s best interests and is very high on Hopkinson’s to-do list.

Have the slightly disjointed performances been a product of Eddie having a spell of limited full-team training time? — Jeremy K

Waugh: It’s an interesting theory. But the issue is that Newcastle’s schedule does not relent.

Between now and the end of January, Newcastle will usually play three matches a week. Advancing in the Carabao Cup was what everyone at the club desired, though it deprives Howe of a ‘clear’ midweek on the training ground.

During the October and November international breaks, Howe will be able to work with his non-internationals, though that will likely mean a senior group of somewhere between six and 10 players. Such time is important for individual work, but widescale tactical and systemic issues cannot be solved when more than half the squad is away.

Howe has adapted Newcastle’s training schedule and loads compared to two years ago — George Caulkin and I are writing about that and other subtle Champions League-approach changes ahead of Union — and there is a lot of individual work being undertaken with Woltemade and others. Graeme Jones, the assistant head coach, even led a session on the St James’ pitch immediately following Newcastle’s win over Bradford City, with coaching staff grasping every opportunity to train the players.

Certainly, Howe thrives when he has significant time on the training pitch, but he knew going into this season he would have precious little before Christmas. Late arrivals in the window, especially up front, have made in-season improvements more difficult to achieve, yet Howe is said to be trying “creative” methods to ensure he can extract more from his charges.

With Livramento’s injury, is there scope for someone like Leo Shahar to come in? — James D

Waugh: We are still awaiting confirmation of the severity of Tino Livramento’s injury, with a scan expected once the swelling reduces. The early suggestions were that Newcastle were hopeful Livramento had avoided an ACL injury, though the 22-year-old is still expected to be sidelined for a potentially lengthy period.

Tino Livramento’s injury presents Eddie Howe with a challenge (George Wood/Getty Images)

The England international will certainly miss the next few matches so, theoretically, Lewis Hall and Kieran Trippier will step into the full-back berths. But Hall missed Arsenal as his minutes are managed due to fatigue after stepping up his return from a broken foot, and Trippier is 35 and cannot be expected to play every game.

Emil Krafth is believed to be managing a minor injury, too, so that may have contributed to Howe overlooking the Sweden international in favour of bringing on another centre-half in Jamaal Lascelles against Arsenal, though the 31-year-old has only started 10 league games in two years.

Dan Burn returning to left-back felt like a horses-for-courses selection against Arsenal and it would be a surprise to see him deployed there regularly, while Malick Thiaw did occasionally play right-back earlier in his career.

More realistically, Alex Murphy, the 21-year-old, may see opportunities at left-back, having come on against Bradford, and Shahar has been training with the first team throughout 2025.

It seems unlikely the 18-year-old will step up regularly in the short term, with Newcastle keen for him to gain exposure in the UEFA Youth League. Yet Shahar may find himself above Harrison Ashby, who did not secure a loan move during the summer due to injury, and who has not made a competitive appearance for Newcastle since joining from West Ham in January 2023.

Any update on the new club crest? I heard it’s not logistically possible to be on next season’s kit? — Chris C

Waugh: An updated crest will not be seen until 2027-28 at the earliest — some inside the club hope to have a revamped design on the kit by then — largely due to the manufacturing process. The lead time Adidas requires is several months for final designs to be in for 2026-27, so there is no chance a new badge will be confirmed in time.

Workshops were held with supporters last season, with club officials explaining their rationale for wanting to change the crest — and a renovation rather than a complete overhaul is the communicated preference. Feedback from supporters is being digested and, over the next few months, further consultation with the Fan Advisory Board and other fans’ groups is anticipated.

After one of the many proposed rebrand designs leaked in the spring and was mocked online, Newcastle insisted no decision has been made, no changed badge has been chosen and they will listen to what supporters want.

Since arriving, Hopkinson has stressed that he will communicate with and listen to supporters, so how this process plays out will be another test of that in practice.

Should Howe take some blame for the Liverpool and Arsenal defeats for not getting the message over to his players that a draw was a good-enough result? — John M

Waugh: There are some similarities with the manner of those defeats, though there are also crucial differences.

Against Liverpool, Newcastle played with 10 men throughout the second half and looked fatigued before the visitors’ winner. Newcastle were also chasing that game from two goals down, so reining that in once they equalised proved difficult for the pumped-up players.

That was not the case for the Arsenal game. Newcastle had led for more than 40 minutes and, strangely, once they conceded, they went from a caution-first approach to chasing a goal. It felt like the players recognised the significance of a victory and how much positive momentum that could generate following a mediocre start to the season results-wise.

Yet a draw, given Arsenal’s quality, would have been a decent result and there definitely should have been a more measured approach. Howe was unimpressed with how his players handled the final moments and felt they should have settled for a draw, rather than hastily try to get upfield, with Nick Pope booting it to an Arsenal player, which eventually led to the corner from which the winner was scored.

Eddie Howe was unimpressed with some of his players at the end of the Arsenal game (Stu Forster/Getty Images)

As hard as it is for a head coach to communicate with his players during a game, especially during a frenetic climax like that, Howe should have made his team aware beforehand of how they should act if such a scenario unfolded. If that was communicated, then the message was not absorbed, or his players were unable to carry out those instructions.

Newcastle should have seen that game out because it would have been a valuable point and the mood would have been nowhere near as negative.

Do Newcastle have enough financial room to make a move for a midfield creator AND a full-back? — Faith-Ann C

Waugh: Newcastle do have capacity to spend in January, theoretically at least. That is largely due to the PSR (the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules) boost they received from the £125million British-record fee they recouped from Liverpool for Alexander Isak.

Some of the ‘headroom’ generated by Isak’s sale was already used up in advance on Woltemade and Wissa, though the way incoming and outgoing transfers are booked in the accounts means there is still lots of room for manoeuvre. While all of the Isak fee will be banked in 2025-26 accounts, the money paid for Woltemade and Wissa is amortised equally over the duration of their respective contracts.

So, to directly answer the question: yes, Newcastle do have the financial room to sign multiple players in January. Whether they do so remains to be seen. Substantive discussions about prospective mid-season business have not taken place yet and are unlikely to really ramp up for at least another month.

A full-back is only likely to be targeted if Livramento is ruled out long-term, but even then Newcastle may wait until next summer when they are likely to replace Trippier. In midfield, signing a creative player is something that has been floated, but whether Newcastle do that in January or next summer is unclear.

(Top photo: George Wood/Getty Images)

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