Jermaine Jenas expects more top exits at Newcastle as promises aren't being filled
Newcastle United have already lost Anthony Gordon this summer and are likely to see Sandro Tonali leave the club too.
Kieran Trippier also chose to leave when his contract expired, so that could be three big names out of the club in one window, and that may not even be the end of it.
Manchester United-biased media and the Man United fanbase seem convinced that Lewis Hall wants to move to Old Trafford too.
After such a mediocre season in the Premier League, it's easy enough to buy into this narrative that Newcastle's top players want an exit, and there may be truth to it in some cases.
Jermaine Jenas feels Newcastle top players are right to want to leave
Former Newcastle midfielder Jermaine Jenas has been speaking to 10bet (via The Chronicle), and he says he doesn't blame players for wanting away as the lofty ambitions of the owners are not being realised.
"I'm not 100% sure what's going on behind the scenes; I don't know whether it's just purely and simply because they haven't been able to spend the money they wanted to. I don't think you can blame (Sandro) Tonali, (Bruno) Guimarães, or Anthony Gordon. They all came in on the promise of the football club being taken to the very next level.
"There were signs of that, don't get me wrong - they won some silverware and had their run in the Champions League - but they've obviously just hit a bump in the road with the finances. In doing so, it unfortunately doesn't allow you to keep these kinds of players.
"They are players who are going to be demanding top-tier European football, and if Newcastle are not delivering that, then I think they've all been at the football club long enough to deserve to move on if they want to."
It's not going to happen overnight
You'd think that someone who was inside the game for so long would have more of an idea of the realities facing Newcastle. Without that ability to spend freely, then the owners' ambitions were never going to be realised overnight.
If we want to be all happy clappy about it, we've done far better than we've had any right to do in the short time since the takeover.
What's really working against Newcastle is that players don't have the luxury of time. A player's career is very short, and if they have big ambitions they want to realise, then yes, they can't sit around at Newcastle while the club slowly rises up the ranks; they will have to move elsewhere to play at the highest level.
It's an irritating reality for us fans to face, and it's not helped when David Hopkinson comes out and says the club will be consistently challenging for titles by 2030. We can't see any way in reality that Newcastle will be at that point in four years.
What's more likely to happen is that Newcastle will sign a couple more top players, and we will sell them too. If we are able to convince them to hang around, then that's a bonus. We struck gold with Bruno Guimaraes, and the fact that we were able to make him fall head over heels with the club, but he is the exception to the rule.
