GIVEN that they had a bid of around £65m turned down for Marc Guehi in the summer, there is an understandable assumption that Newcastle United will have at least that sum to spend when the transfer window reopens in January. Sadly, as Eddie Howe is at pains to explain, the realities of the PSR world in which the Premier League now operates means things are not that simple.

Yes, Newcastle have the ability to spend in January. Yes, they have already identified key targets, with a renewed move for Guehi possible and both right-wing and centre-forward regarded as priority positions. But just because they were going to spend up to £60m on Guehi in the summer, it doesn’t automatically mean they’ll be looking to invest a similar amount at the start of next year.

For a start, Anthony Gordon’s new contract has increased their wage bill significantly. Then, while spending big money on a new signing might not necessarily leave them in a difficult PSR position in the next 12 months, it would have major knock-on effects when it comes to their ability to spend over the course of the next three years. In the summer, they felt the positives of signing Guehi outweighed the negatives in terms of future implications. There is no guarantee that judgement still holds.

Each potential deal has to be considered in isolation; every penny that is spent has an impact further down the road. As a result, the days when there was a pot of money waiting to be spent in a specific transfer window are long gone. The January calculations Newcastle will be wrestling with are much more complex than that.

“Firstly, I don’t think any bid (for Guehi) reached that level (£65m),” said Howe. “That is far in excess of what the reality was. Secondly, with PSR, there is no pot of money that we have sitting there waiting to be spent.

“It’s all about trading in and out and making sure at the end we comply with PSR, and that is the first port of call with us as a football club. We have to comply, as we did last year.

“Then, of course, we are looking to improve the squad at every opportunity we can and there is a determination from everyone at the club to do that. So, it’s about getting that balance right.”

Howe has spent part of the last two weeks in Saudi Arabia, overseeing training at a warm-weather training camp and fulfilling a number of commercial obligations for Newcastle’s Middle Eastern backers.

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During his time in Riyadh, he also held talks with other key members of the Magpies hierarchy, with the subject of the January window inevitably being raised.

More detailed transfer discussions are due to take place in the next two weeks, and it will be interesting to see how Howe’s personal relationship with sporting director Paul Mitchell survives the high-pressure strains of a transfer window.

In the summer, it was widely suggested that the pair were not seeing eye-to-eye, but sources insist they have worked together effectively on a number of different issues in the last three or four months.

Mitchell assumed overall control of transfer activity when he was appointed as sporting director in the summer, but Howe has always enjoyed a large degree of autonomy and influence over transfer matters and will be understandably reluctant to cede too much control.

“We’ve had loose discussions, I would say,” he said. “We will sit down in the next couple of weeks and firm up those conversations with more detailed analysis of where we are going to go, or where we can go.

“It’s not as straightforward as maybe everyone will think it’s going to be, this is going to be a complex window for us. There are lots of decisions to make in lots of different ways. We are always mindful of the fact we have to comply with PSR.”

Yesterday’s Premier League vote on the APT rules that govern commercial deals did nothing to improve Newcastle’s PSR position, with top-flight clubs having voted through a change in the regulations that will continue to strictly limit the amount a club can raise from commercial or sponsorship deals involving companies linked to their owners.

The Premier League was passed on a 16-4 majority, with sources suggesting Newcastle were one of the four clubs to vote against the new rules, along with Manchester City,  Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest.