I've always liked Newcastle since Alan Shearer's days (I'm a Chelsea fan) and i wanted to plan a rebuilding long-term campaign with them, keeping it as realistic as possible.
I disabled the first transfer window, the team has already a decent pool of players perfect for my idea of football wich is a 3-5-2 counter attacking similar to Conte's philosophy. For the first half of the season i've opted for a more defensive 5-2-1-2, just beacause my CBs at the start werent good enough for the pourpose, with Willems and Lazaro running down the lines and Saint as a target man with Joeliton in the adavanced playmaker role. Principal issues are the VERY poor overall finishing of the attacking trio (Almiron is dreadful in that aspect) and the horrible goolkeeping offer by Dubravka (last year one of my preferred GK, now IMO one of the worst). I arrived in the winter transfer window in the 7th place, behind Arsenal and on par with Chelsea, simulating all the matches with the top 6 teams and playing the others. I've decided to cut off a bunch of deadwoods of the team (Carrol, Fernandez, Manquillo, Atsu, Gibson, Colback and Saivet) and loan-out Matt Longstaff and Sorensen. With the money made from that i've decide to buy Sanson, one of the most versatile and joy to use player i ever used, placing him immediately in the squad in place of Almiron and rotate him occasionaly in the other 2 CMs spots.
I've start to search for some improvements in several roles starting from a new CB (Lejeune can become a rotational player), LB/LM (Willems is great but he has already peaked) and a CM (My plan is to use Sanson in the mid paired with Hayden rotated with Bentaleb and a new one). I have identified a group of useful players in Lewis (Norwich), Stark (Hertha), Mukiele (Lipsia), Danso (Augsburg) and Gabriel (Benfica). Before the end of the season I reached an agreement with benfica for Gabriel, deciding to wait for the other objectives and to buy back at the end of the loan Lazaro, Willems and Bentaleb.