Eddie Howe slams recent rumours around 'pivotal' player leaving Newcastle United this summer

We're getting pretty used to the rumours around our top players leaving Newcastle United these days, but some are more difficult to swallow than others.

Rumours linking Bruno Guimaraes, Sandro Tonali and Alexander Isak with moves to 'bigger clubs' are par for the course, and while they can get under our skin at times, we all know that the club aren't going to let their top stars leave.

Recently, though, reports have started swirling that Newcastle could listen to offers for young midfielder Lewis Miley, who broke into the first team last season and showed that he may be the best player the academy has produced in a long, long time.

Miley has had shockingly few minutes this season compared to last, and that has sparked rumours that the club could be set to move him on, but for various reasons that we've already laid out, we don't see there being any truth in that.

Eddie Howe says Lewis Miley is going 'absolutely nowhere'

Thankfully, Eddie Howe has backed us up when he was asked on Friday morning about the rumours surrounding Lewis Miley, the Newcastle boss gave a pretty unequivocal answer.

“Lewis is absolutely pivotal to our future here. From my perspective, he’s going absolutely nowhere.”

”We want to build the team with him in it, for many, many years, that’s my thought process.”

Newcastle need to keep hold of homegrown players ahead of playing in Europe

That's a pretty succinct statement that should put the rumours to bed, and Howe didn't even mention how letting a homegrown player of Miley's quality leave ahead of a season in a UEFA competition would be absolute insanity.

Lewis Miley has a huge future ahead of him, perhaps bigger than the one we expected from Elliot Anderson, and we're still sickened by losing him; we can't repeat that mistake again, especially so soon after the last time.

Newcastle need to keep producing young stars and holding on to them to build the team for the future. If we're lucky, we'll end up in a similar place to Manchester City, who keep producing wonderkids and can't actually fit them into their squad, so they have to cash in.