Newcastle United supporters spend summer after summer constantly refreshing their phones and scrolling for transfer news, but when is a done deal actually done?
At Newcastle, they've had their fair share of experience with chasing deals down the years, but one thing is guaranteed - it doesn't always go to plan! And even when it does, things can collapse when you least expect it.
In a summer that has so far resulted in United getting no senior players over the line, something expected to change in due course, fans can only watch on and hope. Already, the Magpies have reached the stage where they have been linked with hundreds of players in 2025.
Newcastle can't sign every single one of course and the reality is head coach Eddie Howe will eventually be pictured with four or five new faces if he's lucky! But that doesn't mean that names are plucked out of a hat by journalists.
At some stage the player reported may have been scouted, offered, approached, enquired about or even bid for. There is always interest and given that Newcastle's data driven scouting hub have hundreds of names of players on their database, it's not a surprise that some slip out.
Newcastle scouts also get spotted out and about, and Chronicle Live has reported on sightings of head of recruitment Steve Nickson in London and across Europe this season. As United fans swept their way across Central Station in an euphoric manner after a London away game last season, they were oblivious to their own chief scout Nickson, who quietly made his way past them after a scouting mission that very same weekend.
Despite three barren windows, in which Newcastle did not make a senior signing, Howe has been clear on the work going on behind the scenes. He told Chronicle Live last season: "I have always said we have to do the work. So we have to prepare as if we can (sign players)."
The scouting department
Nickson is Newcastle's main man in the scouting department, but the Magpies have a full network of talent spotters who cover games up and down the UK and around the globe. It can often be a thankless task for the scouts with pages and pages of research on a player being filed only for the target to then choose another club. But that is part of the game in scouting.
Nickson is believed to have been heavily involved in signings such as Ayoze Perez, Joelinton, Bruno Guimaraes and Allan Saint-Maximin. But he prefers to remain low profile despite having the nickname "24/7" by some of his peers given his dedication to the job.
Nickson's presence at St James' Park differs to the man he effectively replaced in Graham Carr who left the club in 2017. Carr was much more high profile, did interviews with the media and even ended up on the board before his exit during the Rafa Benitez era.
Carr's knowledge of French football was crucial to Newcastle at a time when funding was tight with signings such as Hatem Ben Arfa, Moussa Sissoko, Yohan Cabaye, Massadio Haidara, Yoan Gouffran and Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa.
Carr, who was handed a long-term contract by Mike Ashley BEFORE the manager at the time Alan Pardew, once reflected on his mixed success with transfer targets and said: "If you're shopping at Tesco, then you're going to make more mistakes than if you're shopping at Waitrose, aren't you? You feel it, though, when your signings play badly and get stick. If you didn't you shouldn't be doing it. It was more than a job, it was my life."
But Carr left under Benitez when the Spaniard began asking questions of certain signings he'd inherited. Seydou Doumbia was a player that left Benitez baffled while he could not understand the length of a deal for Henri Saivet who barely played for the club.
Howe's own nephew Andy is on board with the scouting department these days as assistant to Nickson with the level of data at the highest level it has ever been in the scouting department at Benton.
The role of agents
Newcastle use some of the big hitters to sign players in the agency world including CAA Stellar, who look after William Osula, USM who take care of Lewis Miley and Anthony Gordon and Wasserman, who represent Lewis Hall and Tino Livramento.
Agents and agencies will have good relationships with clubs, USM even have an executive box at St James' Park, but the needs of their clients are always put first. It means Newcastle could get the word of a player of an indication of interest in signing for the Magpies, but agents may sway the mind of their client with a better financial deal in the end.
This unfolded dramatically when Loic Remy initially agreed to sign for Newcastle. In an interview with the Chronicle, Carr said on that particular deal: "They flew him into London, where Derek Llambias and Alan Pardew met him.
"But then he ended up meeting QPR as well, going to the house of Tony Fernandes and playing video games with him. And he was in a hotel in Park Lane - what would you do, I suppose? What are you supposed to think if he'd prefer to go to London rather than come to Newcastle, which was probably better for his career.
"It was disappointing because he was a really, really good player. And if we'd got him it would have ended the need to bring in a striker, which was the thing that we seemed to need every summer - which isn't easy with a budget.
"If we had got him to fly to Newcastle, turned on the floodlights at St James' Park and told him 'This is where you'll be playing' I think we'd have got him. But it's one of those things."
Remy did end up playing for Newcastle but only after going through relegation with QPR.
Getting a deal over the line
Things are never done until they are done, ask Sir Alex Ferguson who thought he'd done enough to sign Alan Shearer in 1996. Only until Kevin Keegan bought himself more time.
Shearer said: "Talks (with Man United) went really, really well, and I thought at one stage I was going to go, and I even went house hunting around Manchester for a day. I got another call off Kevin a few days later saying, 'Can I have another half an hour with you?' And I had half an hour with him, and I just thought, 'What am I waiting for? I've gotta go back home'. And that was it."
Back in 2019, managing director Lee Charnley had essentially thrashed out a deal for Joelinton with Hoffenheim for £40m in winter that year ahead of the summer window. But it was a deal that Benitez did not want to sanction as he felt the fee was too high.
The deal was parked for months, but after Benitez did not agree a new contract, his replacement Steve Bruce was happy to proceed and the Brazilian arrived on Tyneside.
The cliched but welcome sight of a player being unveiled
Like anything in life, things can go wrong when it comes to a football transfer. A player can be scouted and impress clubs and even say yes to the deal.
But other things can complicate matters. Medicals can go wrong, red tape can come into play and even family decisions can lead to a late change in heart. Kevin Keegan thought he'd signed Brad Friedel in 1994 and the American even appeared in pre-season photographs with the squad.
Friedel said: "I actually signed for Newcastle in 1994, but I wasn’t able to attain a work permit so I went from Newcastle to Brondby I was playing for the USA, but they didn’t have an appeals process on the work permit, and you had to have played 75% of your national team’s games over the last two years.
"And when I had applied I think I was 22 years of age and I was the number two at the World Cup and only had 50/60%, but by the time I signed with Liverpool that’s when I had 75%"
In 1995, Newcastle thought they'd agreed a deal with Crystal Palace to sign John Salako but Keegan said later: "He is turning down the move because he does not want to move this far north."
Steve Bruce once almost signed for Newcastle as a player under Willie McFaul and said: "I had a meeting with him at Washington Services when I was a player, but that didn't materialise either.
"I don't think he could afford me at the time!"
In 2009, Newcastle looked to sign Northern Ireland defender Craig Cathcart with the player even posing in a Toon shirt for a picture. But the image never made the public domain after he failed a medical. Despite being asked to pose and smile for the official photographers, those images will never see the light of day.
Then there was the case of Jordan Lukaku. The Belgian left-back, and brother of Serie A star Romelu, was jetted into Tyneside for a loan move from Lazio in 2019. Rafa Benitez was eager to sign the Belgium international defender to bolster his options for the second half of his final season in charge.
But despite going through the formalities of agreeing on a loan fee and wages with the Rome club and Lukaku's agent the deal fell through when concerns from his medical resulted in a red flag from the United back-room team.
