With reports emerging late Sunday of Newcastle striking a deal with Arsenal in the region of £25m for Joe Willock and the player himself reportedly eager to return to St James Park on a permanent basis, Newcastle’s prospects look a lot brighter than they recently did.
After another of our main transfer targets at the start of the summer, Axel Tuanzebe, signed for Aston Villa Sunday afternoon, the reports of the agreement with Arsenal was welcomed news.
Before the news of the agreement broke Newcastle had not experienced much luck in this transfer window and if the signing of Willock progresses smoothly this will provide a much needed boost. If personal terms can be agreed quickly only a medical check would remain and it is hoped that the player can appear in Sunday’s home clash with West Ham.
Assuming everything goes as planned with the Willock transfer, what can we realistically expect of Newcastle this upcoming Premier League season?
Maybe the best way to gauge this is to take a look at the betting markets. Betting exchanges tend to have more efficient odds than the bookmakers and the current odds on the exchanges translates to a 74 to 75 percent chance of Newcastle staying up and avoiding relegation.
At the moment the exchange markets indicate that these are the most likely clubs to be relegated, with the likeliest team named first; Norwich, Watford, Brentford, Crystal Palace, Burnley and Newcastle. In other words, the markets see us as the sixth most likely team to go down.
The odds of Newcastle winning are unsurprisingly above 1000 to 1. Only four teams have a realistic chance of winning according to the betting exchanges; Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United.
Even clubs like Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal are judged to only have a 1 to 2 percent chance of winning the Premiership and a 15-20 percent chance of making the top 4.
Based on the above it seems fair to conclude that even if we are rather likely to avoid relegation our focus should be on ensuring that we pull that off while at the same time are building for the future.
As long as we keep signing young talented players like Joe Willock, we should be in good shape going forward.
In other news; the Championship kicked off last Friday with Bournemouth welcoming West Brom and the match ending as a 2-2 draw.
Both League 1 and League 2 started last Saturday. With the likes of Ipswich, Portsmouth and Port Vale having started their league campaigns, the attention turns to the main ticket, the Premiership.
The betting markets see us as underdogs at home versus West Ham, so we truly hope that agreeing the personal terms and the medical will be fast work for Willock and that he will be on the field in Sunday’s encounter.
If you are unable to follow Newcastle in the stadiums or on the telly, we suggest that you use Flashscore (Flashscore.com) as it is in our opinion the best Live Score service.