There are several reports yesterday and today that Kevin Keegan will be handed £50M in the transfer market this summer.

Kevin Keegan - enough money to spend in the summer transfer marker

There were similar reports in January, shortly after Kevin returned as Newcastle manager, but that £50M amount was spread over both the January and summer transfer windows.

Since we didn’t end up signing any senior players in January, that money would be available in the summer.

But we don’t think it’s actually limited even to £50M, because we understand that Ashley is now willing to commit big money to bring in top class players. He wasn’t willing to do that in January with Big Sam because of a couple of reasons

The team was not doing well and some of Sam’s buys last summer had been struggling at the club
Some of Sam’s potential targets didn’t exactly thrill Ashley
We have already published some thoughts on Englishman who would seem to be available in the summer and any one of these would be good acquisitions. But after seeing Michael Carrick’s performance yesterday in Manchester United’s 4-0 demolition of Arsenal, where he was spraying balls out to the wings and looking the great midfielder he is, we cannot see the Red Devils letting him go.

The 5 players we identified were:

Wes Brown
Wayne Bridge
Michael Carrick
Stewart Downing
Dean Ashton

But there are other potentially available players, who have massive Premier League experience, who can help us out include:

John Arne Riise - Liverpool
Steve Finnan – Liverpool
Peter Crouch - Liverpool
Nicky Shorey - Reading

And of course our acquisition of top youngsters will continue, so that the first team squad will be big enough for next season quite easily.

Players that we expect to leave would include Stephen Carr, Shola Ameobi and David Rozehnal.

So we are well set for the summer, but there is a dark cloud on the horizon right now, and that is relegation. We still have a job to do to ensure we can stay in the Premier league, and our next game against Manchester United next Saturday, at St. James’ Park, could not be harder, especially after Manchester’s complete rout of Arsenal yesterday in the FA Cup.