Newcastle eyeing £100m net spend with four positions deemed ‘essential’ - Report

This coming summer is going to be a big one for the future of Newcastle United, and it may get a tad uncomfortable for fans to watch unfold.

While this season still has seven games to go, it's a safe bet that no matter what happens between now and the full-time whistle on the final day, this campaign isn't going to be looked back on with any great fondness.

Newcastle have enjoyed a good run in the cup competitions, but the league form has suffered massively as a result, and this has caused the hierarchy to agree that drastic changes need to be made to the squad in the summer.

Some reports claim that the Magpies are looking to make as many as eight signings ahead of next season, but when David Hopkinson revealed the financial results on Monday and spoke about the pressures the club is still facing due to financial restrictions, it became a question of whether we could even afford to do such a big rebuild.

Newcastle will need to sell players to raise funds

The iPaper has estimated that Newcastle will have around £100 million to play with this summer before any player sales.

That's not a huge amount of money in today's terms to begin with, but when you add on the fact that the report identifies a goalkeeper, a right-back, a midfielder and a striker as four priority positions to fill, it doesn't sound great.

Those four positions are just the 'essential' ones. We desperately need to add depth beyond those four, and that's going to be nigh-on impossible with just £100 million, which suggests that there are going to be a couple of big names moved on before next season.

We have to accept that some stars will leave

We said yesterday that if Newcastle were to sell Sandro Tonali, Anthony Gordon and Tino Livramento, they could bank themselves up to £260 million. A £360 million budget sounds a lot more useful.

However, that also dramatically reduces the overall quality of the base squad, so we'd have to be sure that every signing we make is Premier League-ready. They don't need to be Premier League-proven, just ready to hit the ground running and make an impact.

We totally back the idea of a squad refresh, and if big player sales are needed to facilitate that, then that's just the nature of the game these days, but we absolutely cannot afford to botch the transfer window like we did last year.

Newcastle is potentially playing a very risky game.