26-year-old Newcastle midfielder is now wanted by Premier League club - £15m fee touted

Newcastle United will likely sell some first team players this summer to start a squad transformation that may take a few transfers windows to do.

The Magpies, despite being taken over by the richest backers in football, still have many players on the books from the Mike Ashley days due to financial restrictions not allowing the PIF to just throw money at Eddie Howe to buy whoever he wants.

Thankfully, in appointing Eddie Howe they seemed to have found a coach who is able to bring out the best in his players and those remnants from the dark days have improved massively under Howe's guidance.

Still there's only so far you can go and if we are to start challenging for titles as is the plan, then we need to start bringing in a higher calibre of player and letting some of the "lesser" ones go.

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Sean Longstaff is currently off playing cricket for Tynemouth

One player who has had a remarkable turnaround under Eddie Howe is Sean Longstaff who was close to walking away from the game altogether thanks to the poor treatment he received from Steve Bruce.

Eddie Howe rescued Longstaff's career and instilled confidence in the academy graduate, but despite the upturn in form, the reality is, Longstaff is still not quite at the level we'd need to push for a top-four finish regularly. He has his moments, there's no doubt about it, but it's consistency he lacks more than anything.

Granted, he played a lot of last season with an ankle injury, but now that the season's over, instead of getting that looked at, Longy is off bowling over after over for Tynemouth Cricket Club.

Any sale of Sean Longstaff would be pure profit from an FFP/PSR standpoint

Eddie Howe clearly likes Longstaff, but there's a strong suggestion that the 26-year-old may be sold this summer and now The Mirror (via Leicester Mercury) believes that newly-promoted Leicester City are weighing up a £15million move for the central midfielder.

Newcastle have plenty of good players in his position when everyone is fit and non-suspended, so losing Longstaff, who would represent pure profit from a PSR standpoint, would actually be a good move, even at just £15million.

It's far from the £50million he was once expected to bring when Manchester United were sniffing around when he first burst onto the scene, but we'll take it.

Interestingly, The Mirror throws up the possibility of Kelechi Iheanacho moving in the opposite direction with Newcastle looking for extra bodies in the centre-forward department. Iheanacho has been released by Leicester this summer, so won't be part of the deal for Longstaff, but The Mirror claims the Magpies could move for the 27-year-old free agent.