Dan Ashworth & Steve Nickson 'under fire' as club launch internal investigation - Report

According to Football Insider, Newcastle are launching an internal investigation into the Sandro Tonali transfer to understand how our recruitment team failed to discover his serious gambling addiction.

The midfielder was brought in from AC Milan for around £55m but has now been suspended for 10 months, keeping him out of all competitive football until the end of August 2024.

The report states that sporting director Dan Ashworth and head of recruitment Steve Nickson will be questioned and have come 'under fire', with the club eager to under how something as serious as this could have been overlooked.

It's very likely that Newcastle will now be forced to go into the January transfer market for a short-term replacement for Tonali - who will continue to earn a reported £140,000 a week - with the media linking us with loan moves for Man City's Kalvin Phillips and Al-Hilal's Ruben Neves.

Hopefully those leading the investigation can get answers quickly, helping put this whole situation behind us. With so many games to come and Tonali likely to be struggling as he begins his lengthy ban, we need to move on sharpish.