It has been a mixed start to the 2025/26 Premier League campaign for manager Eddie Howe, but given the summer that we had with the whole Alexander Isak saga, a slower start to the season was probably what most fans had expected given the disruption that our plans and preparations had suffered.
However, as we head through the October international break we are slowly finding our feet and we now have two wins and three draws from the opening seven clashes of the year and we are pretty comfortably place in eleventh place in the table, but inevitably another international pause means we have to put up with the nonsense that comes from some Italian outlet’s when it comes to the future of Sandro Tonali. For those fans who enjoy a flutter with boylesports tennis and look for the aces in their odds, they will know that you can bank on Tonali to leave claims to surface at these points of the year, even though he never says anything different.
The 25 year old, 27 capped Italian, has quickly become a firm fan favourite at St James Park and his betting ban aside, he has been a regular performer for us since arriving from AC Milan back in 2023. He was also incredibly well loved in Serie A and as night becomes day, every window when he returns to represent his homeland the media in the country always ask him when he plans to return home and light up their league one again.
Tonali practically always gives the same answer, and that answer is that one day he would love to return to the country and that although he would never rule out such a move in the future, at the point he is with his career right now, it would definitely be a move much further down the line. For most of us, his answers always very much read that he wants to experience a lot more success yet, and naturally enjoy the riches that the English top flight can give him, but that when he edges towards the twilight of his career that would be the point that a return to Italy would be on the cards, because by then he would have obviously had the adventures he wanted from his career.
That of course is rarely how his quotes are reported, as they get selectively cropped to suggest an Italian return is a burning ambition that he would like to achieve within the next two or three transfers windows, and that just is not true. For a start there is his current contract to consider, and at his age with well over eight or nine years left in his prime playing career, he will be easily looking to double what he is on as a minimum when it comes to his next contract, or next move. There is also the transfer fee that we would naturally demand if we were to allow him to move on, and most believe his deal does not expire until the summer of 2028, so unless it suits Newcastle and our ambitions directly, he is going absolutely nowhere any time soon.
Some sites, particularly those in England, would do well to remember that and point it out when peddling the nonsense that he will soon move on.
