Report suggests Newcastle United will spend in January but it will come at a price

After the start to the season Newcastle United have had, fans will be counting down the days until the transfer window opens in January with intense hope that the club improves the squad.

The last two transfer windows were, to put it mildly, a disaster for Newcastle United. Last January the club signed only one player and he went into the reserves. That was Alfie Harrison who we grabbed from Manchester City's academy.

We all remember the farce that was the summer, and while there were circumstances that could be used as a solid excuse for that one, the bottom line was that it all came down to poor communication and bullish behaviour.

Now that Paul Mitchell has had time to get to grips with the club there is a huge weight of expectation on him to deliver in January.

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Newcastle can spend in January but will have to sell in the summer

Newcastle have been strongly linked with a move for Brentford midfielder Bryan Mbeumo and now The Telegraph has claimed that the Magpies could move for the in-form forward in January.

However, the report warns that if Newcastle spend in January it's almost inevitable that they will have to sell in the summer.

The names of Anthony Gordon, Bruno Guimaraes and Alexander Isak were inevitably invoked as potential summer exits.

It might be time we started facing up to the reality that PSR has caused

At a certain point, Newcastle are going to have to sell a big star, it's inevitable. Profit and Sustainability Rules have pretty much seen to it that it must be so.

It will be a gut punch at first if Newcastle have to resort to selling a star player, but on the flip side, the headroom that it will create in terms of PSR could see us bring in three or four players that we desperately need.

It's a catch 22 because those three players in particular have been seen as the trio we are building our team around to assault the Premier League, but because we have no other bankable assets, we're struggling to add the quality of player around them to progress. We're not exactly going to get £100 million for Miguel Almiron or Jacob Murphy, so we might have to start playing the PSR game, as much as we hate it.