Five players likely to leave Newcastle this summer

I was reading an article in The Journal which basically said that Leon Best and Danny Simpson will be allowed to leave the club in the summer.

Personally I think it's only wise to move those players on if we have better reinforcements lined up, whether they be in the form of promising players from the academy, like James Tavernier or Haris Vuckic, or whether they be brought into the club over the summer.

Then I started thinking that we are going to lose about five players from the first team over the summer if this report is to be believed. Is that too much? Is it not enough? Are we leaving ourselves with a lot of work to do the transfer market?

Well first off we need to look at who is likely to move on. As the report in The Journal suggests, both Leon Best and Danny Simpson will be allowed to leave the club in the summer. Celtic were interested in Best in January and a deal was nearly done, but in the end nothing came of it.

Danny Simpson is likely to be sold if a deal between him and the club can't be worked out as the club are unlikely to let him walk away for nothing. We've seen it happen before with Jose Enrique and it wouldn't surprise me if we saw it again.

Then we have two out of contract players who will definitely be moved on in the summer. Alan Smith will not get a new contract at this club, well not as a player anyway, and neither will Peter Lovenkrands judging by his solo, emotional, lap of the ground last Sunday. That's four players down...

The last one is Danny Guthrie who is out of contract this summer also, although it's not yet certain if he will move on or not. Apparently he's rejected a new deal although again this is only true according to reports in the press. If true though I really can't see him signing on again as I feel he is wanting first team football guaranteed and will move on to get it.

That's five players are likely to be trimmed from the squad in the summer. Some of them we won't miss, some of them we will, but all of them will need replacing in some form or another, especially with the extra games that Europe will bring.

the question is, can we do it, and with who?