With Alexander Isaac’s fiasco, Newcastle United boss Eddie Howe can get to work and move forward through the 2025/26 campaign.
PIF’s intention was to keep Sweden’s international all the way this summer, but Newcastle won last year’s Carabao Cup and competed in the Champions League with a fifth-place Premier League finish, but his stubbornness being kicked out of St. James’ park has made it a difficult situation to avoid.
Luckily, the magpie has been pulled out in wise deals over the past few months. Howe will replace Isaac and Callum Wilson with two new strikers and feel worthy of the challenge.
The central change in Newcastle
ISAK scored 27 goals in all competitions last season, putting him behind Liverpool’s Mohamed Sarah alone, including 23 in the Premier League.
Replacing him never became an easy task, but Howe must be happy with Yoane Wissa’s £50 million addition from Brentford. The 28-year-old posted 19 strikes in the 2024/25 campaign.
Wissa does not have the technical quality or depth of weapons as an ISAK, but it should provide a consistent outlet in the last third.
And with Stuttgart’s Nick Ultemed signing a club record £609 million deal last month, Newcastle could potentially transform the front line into something special.
Newcastle has signed one of the most exciting young forwards in football in the world, but the ju umpire is very outspoken about whether he will hit the ground running in the Premier League – especially after netting with just 17 goals in 2024/25, only 12 of them came to Bundesliga.
With Isak gone, Howe managed to sell another free scoring Premier League a few years ago.
Newcastle must regret selling original Whissa
Newcastle signed Burnley’s Chris Wood in January 2022 on a £25 million contract. This is part of the shakeup after Piff swooped and changed Toon’s trajectory.
Like Wissa, the Leeds United man at one time was a relatively short-term solution, moving to St. James at age 30.
Wissa likewise had proven Premier League qualifications before making the switch. It arrived northeast after reaching double digits of league goals in each of the four full flight campaigns in Turf Moor.
Overall, the 6-foot-3 striker scored 49 goals in 144 games for the top-tier Clarett. This is a very similar record to Wissa’s own return with 45 goals in 137 league matches in West London.
Unfortunately, Wood looked “a little lost” during the club. As Pandit Tam McManus said at the time, he only scored five goals in 39 appearances.
But Wood bouncing off, then bounced back on last season’s sensational tricky wood.
His 20-goal return outweighs both the Whissa and Ultemade’s respective hauls, and given the consistency of his production in the Premier League, Howe might regret issuing his sales prematurely.
Wood’s final five PL seasons | ||
|---|---|---|
season | App | Goal (Assist) |
25/26 (NFFC) | 3 | 2 (0) |
24/25 (NFFC) | 36 | 20 (3) |
23/24 (NFFC) | 31 | 14 (1) |
22/23 (NFFC) | 7 | 1 (0) |
21/22 (NUFC) | 18 | 2 (0) |
20/21 (NUFC) | 17 | 2 (0) |
Statistics through the Transfer Market | ||
The towering amulet revives his career on urban ground, but quality is always there, indicating that if he was given more time, he might have gone from strength to strength on Tyneside.
However, the decision to sign Isak ended his chances of becoming a superstar in black and white.
Wood could now be 33, but he has shown little indication that he bagged the braces on the first day of the season as he defeated Brentford 3-1 on the opening day of the forest.
If he finds his footing on Tyneside, the New Zealand native has softened the drama of the past few months and has received little in terms of providing a clinical outlet on Howe’s side over the last few weeks, with success in the last third.
