Gary Neville has praised Newcastle United's recruitment and urged them to stick with the transfer policy moving forward, rather than target big-name players like Neymar.
Newcastle United secured a top-four Premier League finish on Monday evening which means they have qualified for next season's Champions League. It's the result of an excellent season which has seen Eddie Howe take the club from 11th place last term, and inevitably the talk now is on the summer transfer window and strengthening the squad to cope with the demands of adding the European competition to their schedule.
After the takeover of October 2021 the Magpies have so far avoided splurging huge amounts of cash on big-name signings and have instead opted to build a team and look for value in the market in the form of assets like Alexander Isak. However, that has not stopped big-name players like Brazilian superstar Neymar being linked with a move to the club.
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But a big fan of how Newcastle have conducted their business, Neville told Sky Sports' Monday Night Football: "I like what they’ve done generally in lots of different ways. We’ve seen many new owners come into clubs where they’ve appointed more fashionable managers, shall we say, where they’ve bought more fashionable players.
"I really like the players up at Newcastle, I like Eddie Howe and I like the work that they’ve done. I hope that they can maintain that humility that we’ve seen from Eddie Howe and the players this season as they try and progress into the Champions League.
"I hope they don’t stray away from the principles and values that they’ve got, it’s really important that they keep that. It suits the Newcastle community, they want a team that they can rely upon. I don’t think they want people who come in on the last couple of years of a contract, so I think they’ve really done brilliantly well.
"I think there is a challenge about how they continue to move forward, investing the money that the owners will want to invest and continuing to achieve. I was just looking at Kieran Trippier, there’s no player that more epitomises Newcastle - he’s high quality, reliable, fantastic - and I imagine the standards he sets in that dressing room, everyone will follow him.
"They need more of those types of players than maybe the ones we’ve seen linked over the last couple of months. We’ve seen Neymar linked, I think that would scare the living daylights out of Eddie Howe and Newcastle fans at this moment in time."
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