This was the moment that Newcastle United and inevitability diverged. The first two years post-takeover featured a headlong dash away from irrelevance and into the Champions League, powered by fierce momentum, unity and heavy spending, but 2024 comes to an end with the notion of progress far less easy to define. It felt unstoppable and then it stalled. December’s four consecutive victories in all competitions was their best sequence for 14 months, a mood-changer but also an indicator of their difficulty.
After all the fantasy, reality bit hard: injuries crippled a squad ill-equipped for European football; points deductions across the Premier League brought a sharper focus to financial fair play; key personnel left, changing Newcastle’s feel; and on the pitch, results became less reliable.
Faith wobbled, inconsistency hardened. As Alan Shearer explained in The Athletic recently, “It does feel like the great, post-takeover ‘project’ has reached a crossroads.”
In 2024, Newcastle gave glimpses of what they could be. When fully engaged, players like Alexander Isak, Bruno Guimaraes, Anthony Gordon and Sandro Tonali threatened havoc. In reaching the semi-final of the Carabao Cup, they have a glittering opportunity in front of them and a means of generating momentum. Win it and nobody will be arguing about progress.
Best moment
Newcastle’s 3-0 victory at Sunderland in the FA Cup in January represented the smallness of everything. They needed it, both in the context of last season (six defeats in seven fixtures in the Premier League and League Cup, albeit the latter on penalties against Chelsea), and in the context of their dreadful record against their local rivals (nine derby matches without victory, including a run of six losses in succession).
By the end, it was comfortable. With away fans being served free drinks at the Stadium of Light because of a technological glitch, with players and staff lining up for a triumphant post-match photo in front of supporters, the idea that a derby match could ever be a free hit was thoroughly subverted. Cheers!
Newcastle’s players celebrate their FA Cup win over local rivals Sunderland in January 2024 (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Worst moment
Post-season following the conclusion of 2023-24 was disastrous. It began with an unwanted tour to Australia and an 8-0 friendly loss, encompassed Manchester United’s surprise FA Cup win which denied Newcastle a place in Europe, a destabilising dash to comply with the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR), Amanda Staveley’s departure as co-owner, tension between Eddie Howe and Paul Mitchell, and an ineffectual transfer window.
Best game
In a year of stark contrasts, Newcastle still mustered some fabulous results. They thrashed Tottenham Hotspur 4-0 at home in the Premier League at the end of last season and they beat Arsenal in the league this season. They also beat Chelsea in the Carabao Cup to avenge 2023’s penalty defeat in the same competition.
For the purity of an enthralling contest which swung both ways and led you with it, the 3-3 draw with Liverpool in early December was spellbinding. Howe’s team twice took the lead, firstly with a goal-of-the-season candidate from Isak, and were twice pegged back. Fabian Schar gave them a late, deserved equaliser. What a rush.
Fabian Schar scored the equaliser in Newcastle’s 3-3 draw with Liverpool earlier this month (Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
Best player
Anthony Gordon was the player of 2023-24 but after a destabilising summer, the England winger has struggled to recapture his own high standards. Lewis Hall is the player of 2024-25 to date. Dan Burn has again risen to every challenge thrown at him, reverting back to central defence after Sven Botman’s anterior cruciate ligament injury.
But over the course of 2025, Isak has become the first Newcastle player since Shearer to score 20 goals or more in the Premier League in a calendar year. Top class.
The stat that sums up 2024
We could go with days lost to injuries last season — their total of 1,950 was the highest in the division — but Howe now has a full squad to choose from (with a couple of notable exceptions).
This is a number rather than a stat, but after two years of significant investment – around £220million ($278m) in 2022 and £142m ($179.7m) in 2023 – Newcastle made a profit of around £7m ($8.86m) in the transfer market. This, their running battle with PSR, losing Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh, that brief feeling “that everyone had their price”, as Sean Longstaff put it, summed up their difficulties more than anything else.
Favourite quote
“As long as I’m happy in the position that I’m in. As long as I feel supported by the football club and free to work in the way I want to work, yes.”
This was Howe during Newcastle’s pre-season camp in Germany when asked whether he would still be manager for the first game of the season.
The England job was suddenly available, but Howe was referring to the loss of Staveley, his biggest boardroom ally, and Mitchell’s arrival as sporting director. Certainties were evaporating, new relationships were raw and unstable.
This, by the way, is not a favourite quote, but rather a (relatively) dramatic one.
My favourite would be: “Alreet wor kid” and Isak slipping into Geordie dialect for a January interview with Shearer.
Alexander Isak – an adopted Geordie (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Did that really happen?
With the PSR deadline looming in late June, Newcastle and Liverpool — briefly, seriously — discussed the framework of a £75m ($97m) transfer that would have taken Gordon to Anfield, with Joe Gomez, the defender, moving the other way.
It didn’t happen, Newcastle retained their best players, and Gordon eventually agreed a new contract, but the repercussions were felt internally and rippled outwards.
Player to watch in 2025
Is it a cop-out to say Sandro Tonali? Now settled in a deep-lying midfield role, the Italian has displayed quality, steel, athleticism and quick-thinking in recent matches, showing exactly what Newcastle were missing during his long suspension for betting offences. Howe says Tonali “hits the ball cleaner than anyone I’ve seen” and his first goal against Brentford in Wednesday’s Carabao Cup quarter-final was a case in point. What a player he now looks.
Newcastle fans are finally able to enjoy watching Sandro Tonali (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
A wish for 2025
A trophy obviously, although I’ve been wishing for that since the birth of time, so it doesn’t really count. Newcastle also need to trade; they cannot go another window without new blood.
What I’d really like, though, and what the club really needs, is proper clarity on what the future entails for Newcastle’s stadium. If they are hemmed in on transfers, then pushing the button on a huge infrastructure project becomes the most obvious — if desperately expensive — way of demonstrating progress.
Are the owners up for it? My fond, firm, personal wish is to stay at St James’, for Newcastle to make football’s best-located stadium the best full stop, for home to be forever.
(Top photo: Robbie Jay Barratt – AMA/Getty Images)
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