Howe must finally offload £25k-p/w Newcastle "nightmare", he's been shocking all year - opinion

With Eddie Howe’s Newcastle United revolution beginning to take shape and gain some momentum, the recently-appointed Magpies boss will no doubt be eyeing his squad carefully over the coming weeks and months.

He has already managed to bring in a number of new players in the January transfer window, but the summer will be just as important in terms of the players they are able to get out as well as the reinforcements they can make.

The fact the Magpies had to leave players out of their final Premier League squad for the second-half of this season is just proof of the kind of trimming work that needs to be done at St James’ Park.

And, one man who surely has run out of chances on Tyneside, is Karl Darlow.

Indeed, amid suggestions that the Magpies were very much interested in signing out-of-favour Arsenal goalkeeper Bernd Leno back in the January transfer window, it’s clear that Howe is keen to strengthen his options between the sticks.

Given how Darlow has performed this season in the Premier League, it’s no surprise to see why.

As per FBREF, he has let in a hugely disappointing 3.4 goals more than he has been expected to keep out, which ranks him as the fourth-worst performing goalkeeper in the entire division.

In fact, he actually ranks at the absolute bottom for a stat which calculates post-shot expected goals – something that works out how likely a goalkeeper is to save a shot (Darlow with -0.42 is comfortably the worst in that metric).

He’s also come in for some big criticism from a number of former players, with Newcastle legend Alan Shearer slamming him for his performance against Brentford earlier this season, saying: “There were so many mistakes all over the place. Darlow there, it’s a basic error, he had a really