During the Premier League season, The Athletic’s Newcastle United subscribers can ask our writers covering the club for their views and insight into what’s happening at St James’ Park.We have pulled together some of the questions and our answers from Thursday’s edition of our Inside Newcastle live Q&A, which included queries about who the best signing of the summer was, whether the present form is sustainable and if the club will regret turning down offers for Jacob Murphy.Want to ask us anything Newcastle-related? Chris Waugh will be back later this month for another session.After Yoane Wissa said Matthias Jaissle is the best signing this window, who do you think the best signing is? — Josh CWaugh: Player-wise, I’m going to be greedy and go for one in the immediate term and another in the long run. For this season, it’s Nico Gonzalez.Newcastle have not had a midfielder like him for years, if ever. He offers the ability to dictate the tempo from deep and to recycle possession efficiently and effectively. In time, the hope has to be that he manages to provide an element of control; Newcastle thrived in chaos at their best under Eddie Howe and the early signs under Jaissle have been similar. To consistently qualify for the Champions League, I believe they need greater consistency and dependability to their play, the foundations of which he can provide.Longer-term, it has to be Sean Steur. Newcastle are extremely excited about the Dutchman and Ross Wilson, the sporting director, even personally made scouting trips to watch the midfielder last year. He is only 18 but has everything to be a genuinely top-class talent. If Newcastle can keep him until the end of the decade, I genuinely feel they may have one of the Premier League’s best midfielders on their hands by that stage.Was signing Sean Steur the best deal Newcastle did this summer? (George Wood/Getty Images)However, I am inclined to agree with Wissa’s assessment if we are going to include the head coach. I have no idea how successful Jaissle will turn out to be, but Newcastle’s hierarchy are adamant they have managed to land one of the next great coaching talents in European football. Their appraisal of Jaissle is lofty, but he has an aura about him and has won trophies everywhere he has been, even if he has not previously managed in Europe’s top-five leagues.Should he fulfil that potential at St James’ Park, then paying his roughly €10m (£8.6m, $11.6m) release fee at Al Ahli will have proved to be a bargain, rather than the very expensive gamble many would argue it appears to be right now.After it became apparent that we had to loan out Nick Woltemade to get Matias Fernandez-Pardo, how can we justify future SCR-driven decisions when we didn’t cash in on Jacob Murphy and Joe Willock? Is this Jaissle-driven, Wilson-driven or something more financially and institutionally complex? — Dan BWaugh: That is a question I have been pondering already this week following the audience with the executives. Howe was accused of ‘hoarding’ players, with a determination to keep around non-playing leaders so they could set standards, but that did have an SCR (the Premier League’s squad-cost ratio) effect. The same is true for Jaissle with Murphy and Willock.The head coach did play a significant role in keeping both players. With Murphy, Jaissle felt the winger was vital to the dressing-room dynamic as a leader and someone who speaks regularly to young players. Willock, meanwhile, has an alternative profile to any of the midfielders Newcastle have and, with no out-and-out No 10 necessarily present, he was deemed an asset, at least in the short-to-medium term.Had either or both left, then perhaps the Woltemade to Juventus deal would not have been necessary to secure Fernandez-Pardo. But Newcastle, like every Premier League club, must balance these decisions and one incoming or outgoing deal can have a significant effect upon their SCR position. Every player within a squad has a ‘cost’ applied to them, which covers their amortised transfer fee, wages and agent commission, and so that is why moving on a player even for a low transfer fee can make a substantial difference, because their salary is removed from the books.