Newcastle egg-faced as Bournemouth, Brentford cash in on smartest sales of the season | OneFootball

Bournemouth and Brentford were supposed to be rubbish after losing key personnel last summer, but somehow improved and can look back on a turbulent 2025 summer transfer window with fondness.

The same cannot be said for Newcastle United, who are involved in two of the eight smartest sales of the 2025/26 Premier League season – and not in a good way.

You can see the silliest sales of the season right here, including two Arne Slot mistakes at Liverpool.

Yoane Wissa (Brentford to Newcastle United, £55m)

Well, this was a saga.

With Alexander Isak making it clear he wanted to leave, Newcastle United were no longer looking at Wissa as the Swede’s partner but as one of two replacements. While the whole Isak situation was unfolding, Newcastle’s priority was understandably to find someone close to that calibre, with the Wissa deal bubbling away in the background.

Newcastle screwed themselves by waiting until August to get the Wissa deal done and it all became very messy. Brentford dug their heels in despite long ago promising Wissa he could leave in the 2025 summer transfer window. With Thomas Frank, Christian Norgaard and Bryan Mbeumo already gone, they told Newcastle to pay closer to £60m for Wissa; his valuation had been around £25m at the end of the 2024/25 season.

Brentford broke a promise to the player but they ended up getting exactly what they wanted, which was a helluva lot more money than they initially expected. Sure, they were a weaker team, but this is Moneyball Brentford and Moneyball Brentford always find a way to magically become better than before.

Newcastle got their man and Wissa got his move. Happy days, right? Wrong. The only winners from this transfer were Brentford, as Wissa quickly suffered a serious knee injury while on international duty with DR Congo. When he returned, he was a shadow of his former self and, across 26 games in black and white, he only scored three times.

£55m for a 29-year-old with a shocking scoring record in 2025/26 reflects horribly on Newcastle but very well on Brentford from a financial perspective. The worst signing of the season has to go down as the best sale of the season.

James McAtee (Manchester City to Nottingham Forest, £30m)

McAtee is not the next Phil Foden or Cole Palmer, unfortunately for Forest. But for City, it’s another transfer masterstroke.

They are ridiculously good at getting high fees for young or unwanted players and McAtee is the finest example of the season, joining Forest for £30m only to score one goal all season and play just 14 times – starting twice – in the Premier League.

He goes down as one of the flops of the season and Forest’s biggest disappointment.

Who knows? Maybe the McAtee deal means the inevitable Rico Lewis to Forest transfer is not as inevitable as once thought.

Armando Broja (Chelsea to Burnley, £20m)

Lesley Ugochukwu deserves an honourable mention but does not hold a candle to Broja, who is looking increasingly less like a Premier League footballer every season.

Likely next to fulfil the prophecy of being ‘too good for the Championship, not good enough for the Premier League’, Broja cost Burnley £20m, moving alongside another Chelsea reject in Ugochukwu.

Chelsea are excellent at getting good money for average players and that was again the case last summer.

Dean Huijsen and Illia Zabarnyi (Bournemouth to Real Madrid and PSG, £104.3m)

Like Brentford, Bournemouth have done a smashing job of turning a potentially dire situation into something positive. It has been well documented that Bournemouth lost the vast majority of their back five last summer and how they have dealt with that deserves an incredible amount of praise.

They recruited very well with Adrien Truffert, who might even be better than Milos Kerkez, while Marcos Senesi and James Hill have stepped up in the middle, and Kepa Arrizabalaga’s replacement, Djordje Petrovic, had a stellar campaign, playing every single minute in the Premier League this season.

Senesi and Hill were not new signings last summer but came into the side like a pair of new signings, while actual new signing Bafode Diakite has not lived up to his £30m transfer fee. With Senesi out of the door in June as a free agent, we suspect Diakite will be fantastic next season.

Bournemouth were forced to invest in Diakite following their £50m sale of Dean Huijsen to Real Madrid and Illia Zabarnyi’s £54.3m switch to Paris Saint-Germain.

Both were excellent under Andoni Iraola and have arguably not reached the same level at their respective new clubs, but their performances elsewhere are not why the Cherries should be chuffed with their sales.

Instead, they should feel ecstatic to have received £100m for two crucial players and somehow not become significantly worse. They have not even been just a little bit worse; they have been better. Despite being only one point better off than in 2024/25, Bournemouth finished the season on an 18-match unbeaten run in the Premier League and qualified for Europe for the very first time in their history.

Why is Iraola leaving again?

Anthony Elanga (Nottingham Forest to Newcastle United, £55m)

The best word to describe Newcastle’s summer window would have to be: sh*tshow.

There was talk of a ‘Newcastle tax’ following the Saudi Arabian takeover, though that never really came to fruition as the Magpies negotiated well and targeted the right players, not going for Kylian Mbappe and Neymar as first expected when they were taken over in October 2021.

There is more of a panic tax over at St James’ Park. The Wissa deal is a perfect example of that and William Osula turning out to be pretty decent only rubs salt into those wounds. With Elanga, Newcastle simply gave in to Forest’s high valuation after the winger’s stellar 2024/25 campaign.

After one good season, Elanga failed to make any sort of positive impact at Newcastle, looking closer to a £550,000 player than a £55m one.

There has been a lack of confidence all season and, again, an awful signing from a Newcastle point of view must go down as a brilliant piece of business from the selling club.

Fabio Silva (Wolves to Borussia Dortmund, £19.4m)

Silva might have cost Wolves £35m back in 2020, but they did very well to get close to £20m and the player’s agent, Carlos Oliveira, did even better to convince Borussia Dortmund to sign him. Honestly, how does he do it? Those eyes must be hypnotic.

Three goals in 39 appearances for Dortmund sounds about right. Well done, Wolves. Well done, Carlos Oliveira. And well done Fabio Silva for somehow securing a £25m transfer to Atletico Madrid in August.

Youssef Chermiti (Everton to Rangers, £8m)

Everton receiving around £8m for a 21-year-old they paid £15m to sign is not great business from a Premier League club’s point of view, but getting that fee from a Scottish club is quite impressive.

Only Tore Andre Flo cost Rangers more money in their history once Chermiti’s add-ons are paid, and that signing came during a very lucrative period in the club’s history. In terms of modern signings, Chermiti is comfortably the most expensive.

The young Portuguese forward is an enigma, in truth. One minute, he looks like the second coming of Zlatan Ibrahimovic. The next minute, he looks like he is playing on stilts. That’s his charm, really.

He could seemingly only score in big games, bagging two braces against Celtic and a hat-trick against Hearts. In fact, 73% of his Scottish Premiership goals in 25/26 came against Rangers’ biggest rivals.

Chermiti’s inclusion is clearly just an excuse to write about him, but the point still stands that Everton got good money for a player who was never going to make it at the Hill Dickers.