It has been a solid Newcastle United transfer window

The case I put forward here will be easier to swallow on the back of Sunday’s win over Spurs.

Yet I have no doubt there will still be many who leap to the comments to tell me to “give your head a wobble” etc.

My view is this: we have had a solid Newcastle United transfer window.

Now I’m not blind to some obvious problems with that statement; not least the fact that Eddie Howe has been clear he wanted more.

I am simply trying to see the bigger picture, particularly in regard to these confounded Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) which are designed to halt our progress.

Let me start with the departures.

Despite the stick he has had of late, Darren Eales very openly admitted back in January that there was a good chance stars would need to be sold.

Would I have chosen to lose Yankuba Minteh after the promise he showed on loan? Of course not. Would I have wanted developing talent like Elliott Anderson to walk away? No again.

However, would I have made the same decision if the alternative was to lose Bruno, Isak or Gordon? Yes, every time.

In fact, I would actually add Joelinton and a fit Botman to the above list, and am hopeful Tonali and Livramento will add their names to it in the coming months.

We had to sell. Those four words summarise our position before 30 June and they tell you all you need to know.

The last accounting period was the final one in which the first months of the club’s current ownership count; a year in which Ashley left us with abysmal commercial revenue akin to our then fellow relegation strugglers, yet our owners spent big in the January on Trippier, Targett, Burn and Bruno.

Beyond those on the list of stars I would be desperate to keep and including the pair of young starlets we sold, who were our other saleable assets to balance the books?

Due to their age, none of Pope, Schar, Burn, Trippier or Wilson would have brought in enough to close the gap. In fact, we’d have probably have had to sell four of five of them rather than two to make the numbers stack by 30 June, which would have decimated the squad.

Targett and Willock were just returning from injury, Hall was not yet ours under the terms of his transfer, Krafth and Murphy’s understated market prices would not have reflected their true squad value, and Lascelles was injured.

My best guess is that Longstaff could have been sold as an alternative to Anderson, and despite his injury Willock would also have returned a notable return.

Both of them were ahead of Anderson in Howe’s selection order and would have remained so if Anderson was still here.

Almiron is, of course, the other saleable asset many expected to move on and would have preferred over Minteh. Yet whether he remained due to a lack of market interest or player choice, the club cannot force a transfer when it is not there to be forced.

So the sales were, in my opinion, sales we had to make, however disappointing they were and however much we may lament what might have been (particularly around Minteh) in the future.

On to our incomings.

The best place to start is the superb value we have secured (in today’s crazy market, anyway) in getting an established Premier League defender on a Bosman and a promising striker who the management have clearly tracked, for £10m.

Clearly Osula is an unknown quantity to most, but in the context of us keeping our main two strikers, we have clearly strengthened in that department.

We have strengthened in defence too – despite the Marc Guehi saga – effectively swapping out Dummett from our squad to bring in Kelly.

It would have been wonderful if at the outset we had secured that other Bosman target – Adarabiyio from Fulham – and it would have saved us many months of fruitless negotiations over Guehi which only served to increase supporters’ anxiety.

What we do know is Adarabiyio’s decision to go to Chelsea was personal choice, rather than a miss by the Newcastle transfer team, and it was understandable. How many of us would take a new job at the other end of the country if we were offered an alternative in the same city as we work now?

So let us deal with Guehi. Another statement the head-wobbling advocates will flinch at: I am delighted he stayed at Palace.

Not because I disagree that he is a very good player and not because I would not want to see him strengthen our defence.

My view is Palace and Parrish were taking us for mugs. No Premier League club spent the £70-75m on a single player this transfer window that Palace were demanding for him.

While Guehi is a great player, it was an astronomical figure to pay for a defender. His performances have not reached the standard or consistency that van Dijk’s did at Southampton or Maguire’s did at Leicester, to persuade Liverpool and Manchester United to hand over such eyewatering sums.

In fact, had Maguire been fit this summer and played every minute alongside Stones at the Euros, would Guehi have even been on our radar? I would suggest he would have attracted a fee closer to the £30m Fulham paid for his defensive partner Andersen.

The Palace owner tried to exploit those solid (but not outstanding) England performances and I hope he is left with egg on his face as Guehi’s value now dwindles, window by window.

I will not try to put forward an argument on the right winger, as an upgrade on the tireless but ineffective Almiron would have been welcome.

However, I do buy in to the club’s ethos that it has to be the right player and I look at other signings clubs have made in that position this summer and am yet to regret that we “missed out on that one.”

The bigger issue here is not who we failed to sign but who we sold in Minteh – and I have already explained why that one had to unfortunately happen.

My final point is how we have performed in the market compared to our Premier League competitors. Many – including respected Newcastle United media commentators – have confused activity with strengthening in their frivolous tweets suggesting those around us have improved.

There is no doubt we have been less busy than others in terms of incomings, but it is more about comparing who those incomings are, how they match your outgoings and what difference they make to the players on the pitch when assessing “strengthening”.

Using that methodology, two of the least busy Premier League clubs – Liverpool and Manchester City – have in my opinion done most of the improving, by being selective in their purchasing approach.

Compare and contrast that to Aston Villa, who have been very busy. Onana has made a fantastic start but the jury is out on whether he is an upgrade on the highly influential Douglas Luiz, who departed. Of their other seven purchases, four have left on loan or been resold.

Of those competing around us, the only ones who, on paper, I think have notably strengthened are West Ham and Manchester United.

Yet it is worth noting both clubs have done the classic “back the manager” and bought the players he demanded rather than the methodical “pick players who fit the mould and improve” employed by Liverpool, Man City and Newcastle.

I would rather be in their company and only time will tell whether the Forest-style supermarket sweep approach in the market plays dividends for those other clubs. Personally, I think they have played the lottery.

We have started the season well – despite some shaky performances. With Barnes already starting to show us what we missed last season and Tonali hopefully soon to do the same, and with fewer demands due to no European action, it could be a very good season.

We need to have a bit more luck on the injury front, and I have no doubt that the ever-learning perennial student Howe, will be ensuring anything on the training side that contributed to that has been addressed.

The first international break could not have come at a better time – the points and cup win in the bag and now an opportunity to address the inconsistent performances.

By not being frivolous, by not succumbing to Crystal Palace’s demands, by not desperately splashing the cash on deadline day to appease a noisy minority on social media, we are well placed to bolster our squad in January, hopefully off the back of a strong first half of the season.

That is because we stuck to our guns and had a solid transfer window. We sold the right players to balance the books, and bought selectively players who would improve the squad. The future remains bright.