Friday brought to a close one of the most difficult transfer windows in recent memory for Newcastle fans. An elongated transfer saga that should have been ended sooner, no backup plans and a reluctance to look abroad all erupted into the results we are seeing now but how much of a catastrophe and disappointment really was the window? Let’s take a look.

So in terms of incomings we signed: Lewis Hall (made his loan permanent for around £28m), Lloyd Kelly from Bournemouth (free), John Ruddy for Birmingham (free), Odisseas Vlachodimos from Forest (around £20m) and William Osula from Sheffield United (around £15m). Before the window if you had asked any Newcastle fan what are the priorities for the upcoming window I would estimate almost all would’ve said a new centre back, a new right winger and a new backup striker. Well we got one of them in the Danish youngster Osula who signs with 0 Premier League goals in 22 appearances, albeit most of them off of the bench for a very poor Blades team. Right winger talks were barely even mentioned it appeared this window with the only attempt at signing one coming on deadline day with Elanga, whereas centre back it feels like every centre back in the world was linked but only one had concrete offers and that was Crystal Palace and England centre half Marc Guehi.

The Guehi transfer saga was a farce to say the least. To me it shows why letting Amanda Staveley walk was a poor choice because Eales and Mitchell clearly aren’t the negotiators that Wor Mandy is. That deal should’ve been left as soon as Palace chairman Steve Parrish started moving the goalposts in negotiations and we should have just left it at a thanks but no thanks and moved onto other options such as Fikayo Tomori who’s of similar quality, cheaper and has Champions League experience. A waste of a transfer window fixating on one target was a questionable decision by the higher ups in the club and does beg the question what on earth was Paul Mitchell doing?

Kelly joined to provide cover at left centre half and left back with Botman injured and Targett seemingly never fit and was a smart signing. Goalkeeper signings I don’t think any of us can tell you why the club think we need five but Vlach was signed as a PSR signing whereas Ruddy will probably be involved in training the youths with Gillespie. Hall being made permanent might have been our best piece of business. Showed signs last season being a top class left back and for £28m for a very young left sided defender in todays market is a perfect capture for us.

In terms of outgoings we were forced into two that we didn’t want to let go; Elliot Anderson to Forest and Yankuba Minteh to Brighton. Minteh makes more sense to me as one of the players let go, never played a Premier League game and yes he looked phenomenal at Feyenoord but we needed money to pass PSR and somebody had to be cut and preferably a player signed for less than £10m a year before should be the first out of the door. Anderson hurt a lot more with him being a geordie lad, homegrown but a £35m fee was too good to turn down especially with us requiring that money to sign Osula Hall etc. Ritchie and Fraser both left on frees and I don’t think anyone was too disappointed with those deals Matt a loyal servant and Fraser who had his season both leaving to see out their careers with Portsmouth and Southampton respectively.

So all in all then was this window a farce? No no it wasn’t. It was bad don’t get me wrong but there is one factor nobody is equating into the result of the window and this is we kept hold of Bruno, Isak and Gordon our three best players. Despite interest in all three they all remain Newcastle players and that to me is a superb window. Factor in Sandro basically being a new signing and yes we wasted our window on a player who was never leaving his club but we didn’t lose strength we kept our core and now it’s time to push onto European football. HWTL