Eddie Howe will welcome Newcastle United players and staff back to the training ground tomorrow safe in the knowledge that three signings are already in the bag.
Newcastle moved quickly to complete a permanent move for Matt Targett before the window even opened and followed that up by signing goalkeeper Nick Pope and agreeing a deal in principle with Lille to bring in Sven Botman. Botman passed a medical on Tyneside on Monday and the formalities of the transfer are now set to be concluded after the Dutchman put pen to paper on a five-year deal.
Only Aston Villa have made more senior signings than Newcastle in the Premier League this summer and this represents a real shift in policy after the previous regime often left it late in the Ashley era. Newcastle's owners' contrasting desire to get players in early should not come as a huge surprise, though, as Howe prefers to do a lot of his business before the players are even back for pre-season.
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So much so, Howe had signed five players by the time the window had even opened ahead of his first season in the Premier League with Bournemouth in 2015. That trend continued in the years after with Nathan Ake, David Brooks and Lloyd Kelly among those who were already through the door come July 1.
Getting players in early, obviously, allows Howe and his staff to work closely with the signings over an extended period of time on the training pitches. It also gives the new arrivals the chance to adjust to the intensity of the Newcastle head coach's demands before the start of the campaign and Howe will hope to add some firepower in the coming weeks as pre-season preparations step up.
Although the Ohio Cup has been cancelled, Newcastle have managed to arrange a week-long training camp in Austria next month, which will culminate in friendlies against 1860 Munich and Mainz. This time away will not only give Howe and his staff the chance to work the players hard in ideal conditions, but also allow the squad to bond away from home.
This will be a particularly invaluable period for Botman, who has already been welcomed to the club by Kieran Trippier and Allan Saint-Maximin, and Nick Pope, who knows Chris Wood and Jeff Hendrick from his time at Burnley and Trippier and Callum Wilson from England duty. Targett, of course, is already a popular member of the group after his loan spell at the club in the second half of last season and certainly won't need any introduction when the squad return to Benton for testing on Friday.
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