Judging Newcastle United's transfers under Steve Bruce is a little bit difficult. After all, the club spent next to no money and there weren't actually many signings. In fact, they only signed 10 permanent players.
A good few of those were free transfers, too, meaning the actual risk involved here was minimal. At the same time, it was a period where Newcastle desperately needed to nail their signings – and, well, they rarely did. That saw them slide down the Premier League table before their saviours showed up to steady the ship and get them on a positive course.
We thought we'd take a trip down memory lane to see exactly what they did pre-takeover and why things full apart under Bruce. So here are Football FanCast's picks for the 10 worst transfers at Newcastle under Steve Bruce.
10 Mark Gillespie – Free transfer from Motherwell (2020)
It's always a little harsh to judge a third-choice goalkeeper signing, especially on a free transfer. And even more so when you're signing a homegrown, local talent in the role.
But Newcastle signing Gillespie was just weird. He arrived as a backup goalkeeper but when both Martin Dubravka and Karl Darlow were out injured, the Magpies turned to Freddie Woodman in goal. Gillespie just didn't have a role it seemed – or they signed him to be fourth-choice.
An odd signing that seemed completely pointless. Perhaps the veteran just wasn't good enough once he showed up but then that's on Newcastle for not doing their homework first.
9 Valentino Lazaro – Loan from Inter (2020)
You can't really blame Newcastle or Bruce for bringing in Lazaro. The right-back was highly-rated to the point where he reportedly turned down RB Leipzig in order to go to the Magpies.
And he was fine – just nowhere near expectations. Newcastle reportedly had a £20m option to buy on Lazaro but decided not to use it once the loan ended.
That perhaps sums things up best. Lazaro arrived with real hype about his abilities and £20m seemed like a bargain deal if he lived up to it. Instead, there was never really any chance that he joined permanently after his five months at the club.
8 Danny Rose – Loan from Tottenham Hotspur (2020)
Rose arrived as a loan signing in January 2020, along with two other players. Newcastle needed a left-back and the Englishman had fallen out with José Mourinho at Tottenham Hotspur.
So again, it's one of those where you can't blame Newcastle or Bruce too much for signing him. The warning signs were there, however.
Rose was unimpressive and rarely looked committed at Newcastle. Bruce was impressed enough to talk him up in the press, mind, but eventually opted not to sign him permanently the following summer.
So we'd place this one under 'you average bad signing'. Rose wasn't good enough but wasn't spectacularly bad and, after all, only a short-term loan.
7 Ryan Fraser – Free transfer from Bournemouth (2020)
Fraser has just been a bitterly disappointing signing. Again, it's hard to judge Newcastle or Bruce too harshly because he was a free transfer and few thought it was a bad move at the time. There was speculation of a move to Arsenal in 2019, after all, even if nothing came of it.
But Fraser was just nowhere near that kind of standard. Perhaps his basic numbers sum it up best. In his final three years at Bournemouth, the Scot scored 13 goals, including a season with seven.
In three years with Newcastle, Fraser has two goals. Tellingly, both came in his second season and after Eddie Howe had replaced Bruce as manager. The man who signed the winger never actually got a Premier League goal out of him.
And unlike some, things just fell apart even after Bruce left. Fraser was isolated from the squad back in March as even Howe was done with him. A free transfer, yes, but one that failed badly.
6 Jeff Hendrick – Free transfer from Burnley (2020)
Hendrick was yet another that, on paper, looked like an easy win as a signing. He'd been very good at Burnley, generating plenty of interest once his contract was up in 2020.
Newcastle and Bruce brought him in but things went south before the first season was even up. Hendrick did play with some regularity but after a red card against Southampton in February 2021, he was out of the starting XI and barely featured.
That carried over into season two, with only three Premier League appearances before Newcastle offloaded him on loan to Queen's Park Rangers in the Championship at the end of January. No one predicted that kind of collapse back when he arrived.
This one really couldn't have gone much worse. The only saving grace was that, once again, it was a free transfer.
5 Emil Krafth – £5m from Amiens (2019)
Finally, one that wasn't in the year 2020. Newcastle actually did something else a little different to the rest of this list here, too – they spent money.
Under Mike Ashley, Newcastle just hated spending that stuff. But here, they opted to release £5m to pick up Krafth – and then just didn't really use him all that much.
The Swede is still with Newcastle and has made at least 20 overall appearances in each of his first three seasons. However, he suffered a serious injury that ruled him out for around a year, reducing him to a single minute in the Premier League throughout 2022/23.
Even before that, though, it was hard to figure out why Krafth was a player Newcastle spent money on. He rarely played, with just 11 starts under Bruce in his first Premier League season. In fact, he's yet to play over half the minutes in a season.
Given how precious money was to Newcastle under Bruce, this was one they got wrong.
4 Andy Carroll – Free transfer from West Ham United (2019)
The return of the prodigal son here – but an ill-advised one. Carroll had left Newcastle back in 2011 as a star in the making but never lived up to that early promise.
By 2019, though, he wasn't just a player who didn't live up to promise – he was one who regularly suffered injury problems and scored just three goals in his previous two seasons.
Given Newcastle's need for goals, this is one that turned into a bit of a disaster. Their other striker signing this summer (more on that in a bit) didn't fire and their backup couldn't either. Carroll managed one Premier League goal in two seasons under Bruce and it came in his second season.
We all understand the sentimentality here but Newcastle weren't in a position to take risks up top. They did with Carroll and it didn't pay off.
3 Nabil Bentaleb – Loan from Schalke 04 (2020)
If you needed a midfielder for January to come in for a first-team role, would you consider someone who, the previous March, was relegated to his club's B team and hadn't played all season? No? Newcastle of 2020 would and did.
So you likely won't be surprised to learn that Bentaleb flopped with the Magpies and just plainly was not good enough for them. Still, Bruce persisted, starting the Algerian eight times over the second half of the season.
No, this one wasn't particularly damaging – just a loan, after all, in a season where Newcastle finished 13th. But the fact that it was so obviously a bad deal makes us place it highly. It was never going to work but they tried it anyway.
2 Joelinton – £40m from Hoffenheim (2019)
There is a fantastic argument that this should be a distant no.1. There is just as solid an argument that Joelinton shouldn't be on this list. We can't think of another player quite like that.
But we're judging the transfers made under Steve Bruce at Newcastle – and Joelinton was an absolute disaster in that regard. He arrived as a club-record signing and the player who was going to lead the attack for the Magpies.
Fast-forward one year and Newcastle have played Joelinton in every Premier League game for a return of two goals. That jumped to four in his second season. For further context of how badly this went, Jonjo Shelvey was the club's Premier League top scorer in Joelinton's first season with six goals.
For what the club and Bruce needed, the Brazilian was a nightmare signing and completely unable to deliver what they thought they'd signed. Thankfully, Eddie Howe spotted the mistake and realised that Joelinton was actually a fantastic box-to-box midfielder and not a striker at all.
And that's why Joelinton isn't no.1 here. For Bruce, he was a disaster but they undoubtedly did sign a wonderfully talented player – they just used him completely incorrectly. Howe has fixed that, though, and now everyone is reaping the rewards. Except Bruce.
1 Jamal Lewis – £15m from Norwich City (2020)
Liverpool had tried to sign Lewis earlier that summer before settling for Kostas Tsimikas. That on its own suggested Newcastle were signing a decent player – let alone his performances in the Premier League for Norwich.
But this transfer – one of the few times Newcastle did spend a decent chunk of change under Bruce – is a shocker. You'll struggle to find a bigger waste of £15m in the Premier League, in fact.
Lewis played poorly throughout his debut campaign and quickly fell out of favour. Things did not improve in the second season, either, and once Eddie Howe arrived, the left-back was completely out. Newcastle didn't even include him on their squad list for the second half of 2021/22.
Newcastle only spent more on Joelinton, Allan Saint-Maximin, Callum Wilson and Joe Willock under Bruce. All have proven to be great signings – three of them are still firmly involved with the first team.
Lewis, though, has had a worse time of it than anyone else on this list. The fact that he also cost a significant amount of money makes him, for us, comfortably the worst signing under Bruce.
