Darren Eales highlights PSR as main reason Newcastle United haven't spent money on players but talks of 'new cycle' starting this year

Newcastle United chairman Darren Eales has been talking to the media as the club releases its latest set of accounts which have shown another impressive year of growth in terms of revenue.

However, as impressive as the overall figures are, the big question is, and always will be, as far as fans are concerned, what is the transfer budget going to be?

As Darren Eales is keen to point out, the signing of Lewis Hall for £28 million was technically a summer 2024 signing, but as he was here on loan for a year prior to that, it's easy to be overlooked.

That being said though, Newcastle's spending in the last three windows has been practically non-existent with January used to free up space on the wage bill rather than add to it.

Darren Eales promises Newcastle United will spend when they can

The Chronicle have reported on some interesting quotes from Darren Eales, and we'll cover the big burning transfer budget question first. No figures were mentioned, obviously, but Eales states that the club wants to spend money but they are held back by PSR.

"To go back to the last three windows, firstly Lewis Hall was signed permanently last summer. So although it feels like he was not a new player as he was on loan, for PSR and the spend we are allowed to do, that transfer happened in that summer window.

"We have also done, since the summer 2023 window, new contracts for Joelinton, Bruno Guimaraes, and Anthony Gordon, so all of those factors are when we have retained our better players. But increased contract lengths mean increased costs. So we have been tight.

"We have all been aligned though so everybody throughout this journey, right from the takeover, everybody understands that we are in PSR world.

"We are going to spend to the max, we are going to drive our revenues and they continue to grow at this highly accelerated rate that we've spoken about. But everybody knows, when we make a decision, and I'll use Anthony Gordon as an example, you saw in the documentary when you pull that forward to January, we are accelerating the headroom we have; it is almost like a salary cap.

"That does not mean we can just go and sign another Anthony in the summer because we brought that forward. But that has been the way we have approached it."

New contracts to big players ate into Newcastle's PSR headroom

The bumper contracts given to Bruno, Joelinton and Gordon will have massively affected PSR and is also a big reason why Alexander Isak is yet to follow suit with the club running so close to their maximum allowed loss limit under PSR.

It's encouraging to hear Darren Eales say that the club will spend to the max, but it doesn't really clarify anything. The max this summer might be £5 million, it might be £250 million, and because of a lack of transparency when it comes to PSR, we'll never know how true that statement really is.

There needs to be some huge improvements made to the squad this summer, regardless of which, if any, European competition we find ourselves in next season.