GLENN Roeder will launch a mass summer clear-out this week by sanctioning the £3m sale of James Milner to Aston Villa.

Roeder, who will be officially unveiled as Newcastle's permanent manager tomorrow, is ready to give Villa boss David O'Leary the go-ahead to hold formal transfer talks with the Magpies midfielder, who spent almost all of last season on loan at Villa Park.

And, with chairman Freddy Shepherd having warned the Londoner he will have to raise the bulk of his summer transfer kitty himself through player sales, Milner could be the first of up to eight players offloaded by Roeder this summer.

French flop Jean-Alain Boumsong and Australian centre-half Craig Moore are both up for sale as the Magpies manager attempts to overhaul a defence that repeatedly malfunctioned in the first half of last season.

While Boumsong's reputation has fallen considerably on this side of the Channel since he made an £8m move from Rangers in January 2005, the Frenchman remains a highly-rated figure in France.

He was recently named in coach Raymond Domenech's provisional World Cup squad and the Magpies are hoping a solid showing in Germany this summer will persuade the likes of Marseille, Paris St Germain and Lens to follow up their tentative interest in his services.

Similarly, Moore's profile will rocket if Australia are able to make it out of a tough World Cup group that includes Brazil, Croatia and Japan and, while the 30-year-old still has another year of his current contract to run, he has already been deemed surplus to requirements at St James'.

Arsenal centre-half Sol Campbell is a possible replacement, although Shepherd continues to favour a pay-as-you-play deal for former Magpies defender Jonathan Woodgate.

The Teessider has fallen out of favour at Real Madrid and, thanks to a clause in the deal that took him to the Bernabeu, Newcastle will be given first refusal once the Spanish club's board finalise their transfer policy later this month.

Given Woodgate's dreadful injury record, though, Shepherd is reluctant to pay anything up front, instead preferring a deal where Real Madrid would receive nothing if the England international was unable to play.

Shepherd has already warned Roeder that finances will be tight this summer. The Magpies are due to release their next set of accounts shortly, and they are expected to show a record loss thanks to the £16m capture of Michael Owen.

With Alan Shearer having retired, the United chairman has told Roeder to devote all of his current transfer resources - believed to be around £5m - to the capture of a replacement striker.

Eidur Gudjohnsen is one option, despite the Iceland international spending most of this season in the Chelsea midfield, with Middlesbrough's Mark Viduka also understood to be a Newcastle target.

But Roeder remains hopeful he can raise further funds by trimming his squad, allowing him to launch a big-money bid for either Ruud van Nistelrooy or Jermain Defoe. As things stand at the moment, neither would fall into Newcastle's price range.

Lee Bowyer, who remains keen to return to London, and Nicky Butt, who spent all of last season on loan at relegated Birmingham, will both leave Tyneside this summer, although neither will earn the kind of multi-million pound fee they would have commanded at their peak.

Similarly, Celestine Babayaro, will be allowed to leave before the transfer window swings shut in August, is unlikely to attract the £1m fee that Newcastle shelled out for his services 16 months ago.

Selling the Nigerian would incur a loss, but it would be nothing compared to the money the Magpies are preparing to wipe off the value of Albert Luque.

The Spaniard, who is yet to start a game under Roeder, cost £9.5m when he signed from Deportivo La Coruna last summer. He is expected to return to Spain on a season-long loan deal, ahead of a permanent switch to his homeland at the end of next season.

l Shola Ameobi expects to be fit for the start of Newcastle's Intertoto Cup campaign in mid-July. The striker, who fractured a bone in his mouth last month, will undergo surgery on his injured hip at the end of May.

"My operation's been booked in for the end of the month," he confirmed. "I'm told it will only take three or four weeks to get back into it. The bone in my mouth takes about six weeks to heal and I'm three weeks into that."

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