Eddie Howe

[Kid Dynamite 7025]

Yeah, was thinking that myself yesterday.
 

Having a good public moan about shit decisions will definitely subconsciously affect refereeing decisions in subsequent games. Fergie was a master at it 

[thebrokendoll 9202]

1 minute ago, Kid Dynamite said:

Yeah, was thinking that myself yesterday.
 

Having a good public moan about shit decisions will definitely subconsciously affect refereeing decisions in subsequent games. Fergie was a master at it 

 

just to highlight what I said earlier, watching the bbc news channel just now and they did their summary of yesterday's sport and mention a day of controversial var decisions. nowt about ours at all but a lengthy discussion of moyes reaction to the one that went against west ham and how he was justified in being angry.

far rather see this than a philosophical shrugging of the shoulders. 

[Gemmill 44850]

I honestly don't think it makes any difference. All the decisions were covered at length on MOTD, ours included, and it'll be pressure from the media/the Premier League itself rather than post match rants from managers that lead to change. 

 

The whole thing with Howe is his measured, analytical approach - he was absolute class last week in response to the Liverpool result (the additional time and the incident with the bench). I don't think you can expect him to be like that AND go off on one on camera about something else a few days later. 

 

Howe will be bang into all that control the controllables stuff with his staff and his players, so for him to then lose his shit over something that's been and gone makes no sense. 

[OTF 7295]

5 minutes ago, Gemmill said:

I honestly don't think it makes any difference. All the decisions were covered at length on MOTD, ours included, and it'll be pressure from the media/the Premier League itself rather than post match rants from managers that lead to change. 

 

The whole thing with Howe is his measured, analytical approach - he was absolute class last week in response to the Liverpool result (the additional time and the incident with the bench). I don't think you can expect him to be like that AND go off on one on camera about something else a few days later. 

 

Howe will be bang into all that control the controllables stuff with his staff and his players, so for him to then lose his shit over something that's been and gone makes no sense. 

 

His response was measured and reflective rather than angry simply because he knows there's nothing to gain from anger, except to deal with it and move on from it if that's how you work.

 

The Premier League site has no mention whatsoever of any of the drama, so it's pretty clear that their standard response of don't acknowledge the problem will be what we get, with no visibility of whether there has been or will be any action taken behind the scenes to address the various inexplicably erroneous decisions that affected so many results.

[Gemmill 44850]

I'm talking about closed door conversations between the PL and the refs association rather than articles on their website about how shit they all are.

 

[thebrokendoll 9202]

probably best not to dwell too much on what sort of conversations go on between a corrupt cunt like masters and referees.

[Gemmill 44850]

 

[Craig 6682]

I should imagine what Eddie says to the media, and what he says behind closed doors will be somewhat different. He comes across as a man of integrity who is extremely and naturally media savvy, but I doubt he suffers fools. I imagine he is directing a lot of anger in the direction of PGMOL but we’ll never get to witness it,  nor will the media,

[Craig 6682]

47 minutes ago, Gemmill said:

Howe will be bang into all that control the controllables stuff with his staff and his players, so for him to then lose his shit over something that's been and gone makes no sense. 

This is a quality of his that I think he’s quietly instilled into the club. Take Trippier yesterday - wanting to go talk calmly with the referee to understand the rationale whilst at the same time using his left arm to gesture that he wanted Joelinton to fuck off, who clearly wanted to rip the ref’s head off. 

[OTF 7295]

29 minutes ago, Gemmill said:

I'm talking about closed door conversations between the PL and the refs association rather than articles on their website about how shit they all are.

 

 

Obviously, but if they can't even acknowledge the most patently obvious errors that are by far the biggest talking points in three or four games then it's a solid indicator for their behind the scenes attitude and what will go on behind closed doors.

[OTF 7295]

5 minutes ago, Craig said:

This is a quality of his that I think he’s quietly instilled into the club. Take Trippier yesterday - wanting to go talk calmly with the referee to understand the rationale whilst at the same time using his left arm to gesture that he wanted Joelinton to fuck off, who clearly wanted to rip the ref’s head off. 

 

A few more games like this and he might start gesturing the other way to Joelinton.

[wykikitoon 20129]

Just watched motd and the lino flagged a goal offside for Brentford which the leeds defender clearly headed on. Do these cunts just close their eyes? 

[Craig 6682]

1 minute ago, wykikitoon said:

Just watched motd and the lino flagged a goal offside for Brentford which the leeds defender clearly headed on. Do these cunts just close their eyes? 

And when it was rightly given, the Leeds defenders were surrounding the referee giving him shit. There’s partisan views and then there’s just being plain thick. 

[Craig 6682]

3 minutes ago, OTF said:

 

A few more games like this and he might start gesturing the other way to Joelinton.

I get your point  

 

But on a serious note it was further demonstrable why Trippier should be club captain. Handled that situation well. We’ve witnessed other clubs completely lose their heads and with it, the match when faced with shocking decisions like that. If anything it spurred us on.

[wykikitoon 20129]

4 minutes ago, Craig said:

And when it was rightly given, the Leeds defenders were surrounding the referee giving him shit. There’s partisan views and then there’s just being plain thick. 

Aye I noticed that 😂

[Kid Dynamite 7025]

1 minute ago, Craig said:

I get your point  

 

But on a serious note it was further demonstrable why Trippier should be club captain. Handled that situation well. We’ve witnessed other clubs completely lose their heads and with it, the match when faced with shocking decisions like that. If anything it spurred us on.

He clearly is club captain in all but name. Lascelles will get to wear the armband in cup games to save face 

[thebrokendoll 9202]

7 minutes ago, OTF said:

 

A few more games like this and he might start gesturing the other way to Joelinton.

 

I hope so.

[Craig 6682]

44 minutes ago, OTF said:

 

A few more games like this and he might start gesturing the other way to Joelinton.

Have to add like, it’s no mean task holding back a raging Joelinton with one arm. He was like a bull charging through the streets of Pamplona 

[ewerk 30597]

Quote

We are on the Gateshead side of the river, gazing through a hotel window at the thick, black water below, across the span of the Tyne Bridge towards Newcastle and a place called home. Eddie Howe has been talking about the city’s ferocity, about tumbling head over heels with the gorgeous madness of it, about being able to see St James’ Park from here, from his new house, from everywhere and then he says something that makes my breath catch.

 

“I’m not here to just exist,” he says.

 

And it makes you wonder all over again, just how Newcastle United came to be that zombie football club, ticking through the seasons, cold and stripped back, existing but scarcely trying, where supporters tramped in under sufferance and then grumbled at the owner, at the manager and sometimes both, everybody split into angry cliques, when it could have been like this. Seething, vibrant, together, alive and full of yearning.

 

Newcastle have moved on from the Mike Ashley era and maybe it’s time we stopped trying to explain the loss we felt as fans — that I felt as a player from a happier time — when the big idea was winning something or grasping for it. Nobody listened. Eddie has come to Tyneside and reminded us of ourselves, moulding our geographical isolation, our sense of being ignored, into a deafening strength.

 

I was at Anfield the other week and the way Eddie’s team, still at the beginning of their development, found a way to inflame the crowd, to take on a brilliant, world-class side, was a thing of niggling beauty. I’m so weary of Newcastle being meek, of lacking the equipment to do anything other than sitting back and taking a hammering, but there is improvement now and it is real and growing. A baring of teeth.

 

“I’m not in it to be popular or anyone’s second team,” Eddie says and it is like a symphony crashing in my ears. “I’m in it to try to win, to create a culture and environment where we don’t accept anything other than winning. To do that, you can’t be labelled nice or soft touches and that means doing everything to get that win. At times, that might be unpopular with opposing teams, opposing supporters, referees.”

 

Newcastle are viewed differently post-takeover. They have money, ambition and contentious owners, but Eddie is tapping into something far deeper and older. He wants, he says, “that feeling of us against everyone else. I’m trying to create that internally, but I don’t think we’re having to force it. It’s something we can feel in Newcastle. There are a lot of people who want to knock us and criticise us and probably don’t want us to be successful. We’ve got to embrace that.”

 

I chuckle. When Eddie, 44, was appointed head coach in November, there was a school of thought that he was wrong for Newcastle, too pure a footballing fundamentalist for a huge, flailing club in the thick of a relegation battle. That thought is buried beneath Gallowgate. Whatever happened to that nice guy Eddie Howe, I ask him, the fresh young manager who took Bournemouth through the divisions, playing lovely football? What have you done with him?

 

It is a throwaway question and I expect him to laugh back, but it doesn’t come.

 

“I’m probably not as nice as I was,” he says. “And I’m being serious when I answer that. Because football does change you. I have certainly seen my personality change very gradually over time. That’s not to say I’m not nice when I need to be — I’d like to think I’m still there for my players in every way personally — but you get so consumed with football, you live the results, training, being the leader of the club in terms of on the pitch and everything that happens on it.

 

“You can’t overthink things. You have a decision to make and you know you’re affecting people’s futures and their lives but, no, it’s the right thing to do. The emotional side has to be second to your critical eye and the decision. How you deliver that news, that’s where it comes to your personality. I’m a firm believer in delivering things in the right way, but if there’s a decision to be made, you have to make it. You can’t be too nice.”

 

Is it any wonder Newcastle fans are in thrall to this solid, relentless, detail-obsessed man, an outsider who gets us, who rescued the team in such startling fashion, who has prodded the Geordie monster? The relationship is two-way. In his time away from work after leaving Bournemouth, Eddie travelled and studied and honed his methodology — more of that later — but part of him did not know what his next club, the right club, looked like. Not until it looked like this.

 

“I’ve fallen in love not just with the place but with the people as well,” he says. “Immediately at the training ground, the first people you meet going in, you think, ‘I wonder how this is going to go…’, but I’ve loved them from minute one. I don’t know how they feel about me, but I certainly love them! And then the supporters, obviously, that connection we’ve grown to have a good feeling off each other. I love the fact it’s all about Newcastle. I love that intensity.”

 

Is he emotional?

 

“I control it, I think,” he says. “I am a very emotional person and I’m more emotional as I’ve got older, probably like we all do. If I put a film on… I’ll cry straight away over something like that. I think it’s maybe when you have kids, you see life differently. But when it comes to football I’m able to control my emotions very well on matchdays because I’m always thinking about what my players need.”

 

He is different from Kevin Keegan and Sir Bobby Robson, Newcastle’s great heart-sleeve merchants, but perhaps there are shades of Rafa Benitez in the measured way Eddie has stirred this feeling. When I think back to Arsenal and the final home game of last season, with the club long since safe, when the team played like the crowd sounded and they won 2-0, it felt like a taste of what Newcastle could be. He must feel that power and his place in it, surely?

 

“Definitely,” he says. “I’m trying to build the unity we need, not just with the players I’m working with and the staff and supporters, but through the whole city, that we’re all together, that we’re all united against everybody else. To say, ‘Come with us on this journey as we try and fight everyone for success’.”

 

Wow. If I had any hair left, it would be standing up.

 

I’m fuming, I say, as we sit down in an executive lounge at the Gateshead Hilton, Eddie pristine in his training kit, top button fastened. A few days earlier, Newcastle drew 0-0 with Crystal Palace but were on the wrong end of a terrible VAR call and I’m not ready to let it go. What do we do with this infuriating system that is supposed to iron out mistakes but seems as vulnerable as ever to human error?

 

“The problem is that they’re missing the big decisions, the clear ones like that affecting games, and then getting involved in ones they shouldn’t,” he says. “It’s become a mess.”

 

It is one of the great vagaries of management; how a week of effort can hinge on a moment. Different circumstances, but it was similar at Liverpool, where Newcastle conceded in the 98th minute to lose 2-1. How do you put that frustration to one side?

 

“That’s not one of my strengths,” Eddie says. “After the Liverpool game, the ending lived with me… it’s probably still with me now. And it may be one of those moments that you never truly move on from. I was replaying the last couple of minutes over and over in my head thinking, ‘What could we have done differently?’. And then you go to Saturday with that VAR decision and the number of chances we missed…”

 

It leaves Newcastle 11th in the Premier League. If you require a little context, it took them until late November last season to reach seven points and it was December before they mustered their first victory. Their third clean sheet? Well, that came in February, but it was a different club in a different place and in the here and now Eddie is not satisfied. “It’s not been a true reflection of our performances,” he says of their league position. “We’ve deserved more.”

 

Newcastle have spent more than £200million on players since January, an astonishing total, but also a necessary correction from what went before. With the team in transition and with the club still in that post-takeover glow, everything feels like a novelty. The club has huge targets — the game’s biggest honours within five to 10 years — but it is not easy to pinpoint what this season’s aims should be. No threat of relegation? Top 10, top eight, better? A cup run?

 

“It’s a difficult one to say, ‘All right, this is what success looks like this year’,” Eddie says. “If you look at our points tally last season, it ended up OK from where we were, but our general performance-markers and the key stats you look at — possession, shots, shots conceded — were quite low. We won a lot of games towards the end, but we weren’t the dominant team a lot of the time. I don’t think you can sustain that.

 

“If that’s your style then eventually you’ll stop winning and you’ve got a big problem. So we’re trying to change. It’s got to be gradual, but we’re trying to implement a style where we’re progressive and dominant and going home and away to attack the game. That’s going to be my biggest marker in terms of how we improve rather than points.”

Ultimately, it is about replicating Manchester City and Liverpool, who “don’t tend to deviate from plan A, who can just say, ‘We’re so good at what we do that we’re going to beat you today’, wherever they turn up,” he says. “Ideally, that’s where we need to be in one or two years, where we have that mindset.”

 

Until then, Eddie has to construct and compromise, but he insists that he has, “always been pragmatic and always tried to find a way. Maybe it just gets highlighted a bit more being here. We’ll do what we feel it takes in that game. Hopefully, with our evolution, we’ll be talking about the beautiful things.”

 

Yet there is already a sea-change in outlook. Eddie has not shied away from saying he wants to win trophies at Newcastle and the club is now geared up for trying.

“If I said, ‘Right, we’re going to win a cup this year’, people would look at you and say, ‘OK, you’ve made a statement and now you need to back it up and if you don’t, you’re in trouble’,” he says. “I’d like to think I’ve gone a different way and said that is my dream. I’m not here to just exist. I want to make a difference. I want people to talk about the team we’re trying to create in years to come.”

 

The other way he has done it is by looking to the past. The Keegan and Sir Bobby years felt lost to Newcastle, as if the memory of near misses, cup finals and the Champions League was too painful to bear. Kevin came back under Ashley and was treated dreadfully. I gave it a go as manager (briefly), told him what I thought should happen next and never heard from him again. All of us were ostracised from the club we used to be. Alienated from fun.

 

Eddie has spoken to Kevin and told this generation of Newcastle players about that dashing, headlong team of the mid-1990s. “When I say I want to unite the club, I really mean it,” he says. “Celebrating our past, celebrating past players, managers, heroes of the club, that has to be part of what you do. You want players to look at it and go, ‘I want to be the next Alan Shearer, I want to be talked about’. You can’t do that if the club’s split. It’s impossible.”

 

I’m very moved when Eddie extends an invitation for me to go to the training ground and speak to his squad. I couldn’t have done that under Ashley, because I felt so unwelcome. Now, I’m torn. I’m very conscious that, to some players, I’d be seen as the fella who hammers them on Match of the Day from time to time and wonder if I should keep that distance, but there’s another bit of me that would love it. To smell the grass again, to feel part of things. Man. That pull of home.

 

We retreat back to the start of last season and what feels like a lifetime ago. Eddie had left Bournemouth by mutual consent in August 2020, ending a relationship as player and manager that, over various spells, stretched to decades. What a job he did down there, leading them through the leagues and keeping them at the top for five years. And what a big world it now looked.

 

Over the next 15 months, did he ever worry if the right club would come along? “Yeah, I did,” he says. “Because I didn’t know what the right one looked like. It was strange. I wanted to take some time out, spend time with my family and then develop my skills so that when I did come back in, I was totally different. I didn’t want to come back the same. I wasn’t lazy. I was working on me.”

 

He visited other clubs — including Atletico Madrid, where a certain Kieran Trippier was stationed — and soaked up knowledge. “I had all my diaries, feet tall if you piled them up,” he says. “Someone would say, ‘Give me a training session’, and I’d reply, ‘Give me about 20 minutes and I’ll find you one!’. I spent a lot of time condensing all that work, getting it on a laptop. It was painstaking, but now I can refer back and find things straight away. It’s such a game-changer for me.”

 

Eddie was in a “good place”, he says, but also unmoored. “I needed to really believe in the project I was going to take on. And having left a club that was very, very special to me, it suddenly hit me — ‘I don’t actually know what I’m looking for in my next challenge’. I turned down a lot of jobs because of that reason. Unless Newcastle had come along, which was immediately the one, I don’t know where that would have happened.

 

“Celtic was the one job I’d been offered that really appealed. The issue there was my staff. I felt that if I was to come into a pressured job like that, I needed to go in with a sense of stability. I could have recruited new staff, but then you’re working each other out and there’s a transition process where it probably takes three, four, five months. That’s five months too late. I needed my staff with me and we couldn’t get them together.”

 

Then came a vacancy at St James’. After an exhaustive recruitment process, countless candidates and conversations, the final decision was between Eddie and Unai Emery, the Villarreal and former Arsenal manager. By all accounts, Eddie’s interviews with Newcastle’s new ownership group were detailed, meticulous and impressive.

 

“You never quite know how you’re perceived,” he says. “I’m presenting not so much on the team but on my method of work and, ‘This is what I will do’. One of my biggest passions is player development and trying to hone in on making them the best they can be. And then you wait for a bit of feedback. You’re thinking, ‘How did that go? You know, I’ve got no idea’.”

 

Did he have to wait long? “Well, yeah, I found out that it was a no and they were going for Unai,” he says and now there is laughter. “When I found out it was down to us both, I could understand the club’s decision, because you’ve got someone who’s worked in the top leagues in Europe for a long period of time, so it was almost like, ‘I had no chance of winning that fight’. But the rest is history.”

 

Did he ever question if he could rescue Newcastle, who were 19th in the Premier League, five points adrift of safety? And surely it was a risk? “I didn’t doubt my ability to affect the players,” he says, “and it really helped knowing Callum Wilson, Matt Ritchie and Ryan Fraser (from Bournemouth) because there was a positive reaction and that gave us a good bit of energy. The rest is then down to your work.

 

“I suppose the reality is that every decision you make in football is a gamble, but I didn’t see it like that and I wanted to take on the challenge. It was never one I could turn down. Even though you look at the table and… we knew it was going to be very, very difficult and anticipated it going right down to the wire. We’d have taken that, to be honest, going into the last couple of games with a chance of staying up.

 

“It was all about the size of the club, the history, the optimism of the supporters in that sense of wanting a style of play, wanting to be entertained. I felt I could try and deliver that. The takeover was a bonus for me, in that there was going to be backing, but it wasn’t the reason I took the job. I would have taken the job anyway.”

 

Really? After everything that had gone before? With the club a shell?

 

“Yeah, I’d have taken the job because of the fans and the history and the chance to leave a positive mark at a club that has this incredible stature in the game,” he says. “I wanted to do something, to affect people in a city which has that image of ‘The Entertainers’ and to try to recapture that.”

 

For Eddie’s sake, I’m delighted it never came to that, because Ashley’s Newcastle was set up to fail, but then we can’t discuss that fantasy without mentioning reality. The takeover did happen and the consequences are felt everywhere. Newcastle are now big news, but with that comes big scrutiny and he is employed by a club which is 80 per cent owned by the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia, a country with a poor human rights record.

 

Fairly or not, everything at Newcastle is now viewed through the prism of sportswashing, something Eddie has been asked about repeatedly. Did the ownership question come into his thinking and if so, how much?

 

“Yeah, of course. I’d be lying if I said no, because that’s not true,” he says. “But I think, for me, when the Premier League went through the rigorous tests that they needed to go through and then ratified the takeover, that was important.”

 

Does Eddie understand, though, that for some people, this issue is about more than football?

 

“I totally understand that,” he says. “But from my perspective, it is all about football and sport. That’s what I live. My world has been lived around sport and I’m making football decisions. And I think, hopefully, people can see that.”

 

And in those football terms, in terms of the buzz you get in this compact, fervent city, the positivity is undeniable, with the club looking upwards and outwards. Yet it was not all smooth sailing for Eddie, whose arrival brought a jolt of optimism but no instant gratification. When the side travelled to Elland Road on January 22, they had only won once and were rebounding from a defeat to Cambridge United in the FA Cup and a damaging draw at home to Watford.

 

“It seems strange now,” he says, “but we didn’t really know at the time how big that Leeds game was. Now I look back and go, ‘Well, that was the turning point. That was the game that swung everything our way’. The lads performed really well, we won and it was a real feeling of togetherness, because everyone contributed. A big day.”

 

By then, Newcastle were beginning to make inroads in the transfer market. Chris Wood, a £25million acquisition from Burnley started at Leeds and so did Trippier, who was first through the door. A serving England international and newly minted title-winner in La Liga, Trippier was a huge signing, a leader and a statement all in one.

 

Eddie had gone to watch Atletico train a couple of months earlier. “We spent a couple of days with Tripps and it got us talking and talking about his future,” Eddie says (the pair had previously worked together at Burnley, where Howe had been manager). “Coming back to England was something on his mind. As soon as we got the job, it was straight away, ‘Right, Kieran, let’s speak to him and see’.

 

“The thing I loved about his attitude was something very similar to Bruno (Guimaraes); no relegation or escape clauses, all-in, desperate to come, wanted to pull on the black and white shirt. That was so refreshing. Getting the right characters in like that, people who just wanted to fight and had no way out, is so powerful. Character is a huge part of what we do in recruitment and coming into a relegation battle, it felt like a non-negotiable.”

 

Eddie was the de-facto director of football, making calls on players and spreading himself thinly. It was a manic, exhausting January. “I wouldn’t say we got lucky because we made some very good decisions, but that was quite a chaotic window,” he says. “We did really well, but you won’t be able to deliver that long-term because you need your structures to be right. Your recruitment processes have to be so good with the competition you have around the world for players.”

 

Around £90million was spent, but it was targeted and precise. Trippier, Wood, Guimaraes, Matt Targett and Dan Burn all made an impact — a pretty remarkable hit rate — but equally impressive was the way Newcastle’s squad rose with them. Chief among them was Joelinton, a £40million misfit who shrunk while wearing my old No 9 shirt. Now? A brilliant midfield enforcer and the perfect emblem of the turnaround Eddie has orchestrated.

 

“When you see a player do well — and improve dramatically in Joe’s case — it gives you a great source of satisfaction, but the credit lies with him,” Eddie says. “I remember seeing him in our first training session and thinking, ‘Wow, what a player he is’. I didn’t know too much about what had happened to him here, but that initial impression was of an outstanding talent who also seemed like a really good guy. My opinion hasn’t changed.”

 

Then there are players like Allan Saint-Maximin, whose gift is inconsistent and needs to be unlocked. “I’m pleased I’m managing this club now and not five years ago,” Eddie says. “Through every season you learn and adapt. I’ve always felt I can relate well to players, probably because of my career, as in not being very good! And being injured a lot helped me understand players’ limitations, fears. I think I’ve got empathy.

 

“With someone like Allan, what I’ve tried to do is understand how he thinks, what he needs to be the best he can be. I work backwards from that point. And that’s where I say being able to control my emotions well helps in those situations, where you’re maybe frustrated. You put that to one side and think, ‘What does he need to help him?’ I’ve been able to condition my brain to think that way.”

 

By May, you wondered what all the fuss had been about. Newcastle finished 11th, 14 points above the bottom three, an unparalleled recovery from where they were. By any metric, it was a stunning achievement

 

Was he able to enjoy it? “Probably not,” he says. “It’ll only be when I’ve stopped that I’ll be, ‘Oh, that was good, I loved that’. I don’t know how you felt in your playing career scoring all those goals, but on the night of a game I’m feeling the pressure immediately to go, ‘Right, next week…’. The satisfaction doesn’t really exist for any length of time.”

Scott Parker has already gone at Bournemouth, Thomas Tuchel has been sacked at Chelsea, Brendan Rodgers is teetering at Leicester City. In the snap of a finger, everything can go.

 

“That’s the problem when you’re a manager, you’re always living in fear,” Eddie says. “Well, I am.”

 

It is an interesting choice of words. Does that fear motivate him?

 

“Yeah, absolutely. I’ve got no problem saying that. It’s a big part. You’ve got that fear of tomorrow. If you don’t prepare right, you don’t get training right, you don’t get your game plan right and then it falls away. There are not many professions like it. If you’re a musician and write a hit single then that’s you for the next 50-60 years. You can’t live off one game in football. You’re judged game to game.”

 

You can understand why that quote from John Wooden, the late American basketball coach, is so precious to Eddie: “Make each day your masterpiece.”

 

Having said all that, Eddie has a firm safety net at Newcastle and quite rightly so. In February, Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi, the club’s co-owners and asset managers, told The Athletic they hoped he could become “the next (Sir) Alex Ferguson”. If people scoffed at that, there was less of it when he signed a long-term contract extension recently. Yes, he has pressure to perform, but they want him to build and grow with them.

 

That new deal protects the club — the FA will undoubtedly be watching as it monitors potential England managers — but it also protects him, a commitment to his “all-in” mentality. “It’s not like it was, ‘If you don’t give me a new contract I’m going to leave’, it was never like that,” he says. “It was more like when I came in, ‘If you do well, we want you to stay’. It was those kinds of conversations. When I was taking the job, all I could see was staying up. There was no other thought. The future could wait.

“Once we’d done that, the people at the club were as good as their word. It was, ‘Right, let’s sit down and discuss a new deal’. We had those conversations immediately after we were safe and then signed it just before the start of the season. It was an example of the club saying something and acting on it, which from my perspective was much appreciated.”

 

With Dan Ashworth now on board as sporting director, “the chain of command is slightly different” and his interactions with Staveley and Ghodoussi are less frequent, but “they’re brilliant people to work with”. “They care so much about the club and its people,” he adds.

 

Having Vicki, his wife, and their three boys settled around him, can only help. “It’s the minimum requirement,” he says. “You have to be absolutely committed and show that by bringing your family, being part of this city and embracing everything to do with Newcastle. It wouldn’t work if I was going back to Bournemouth every two minutes. It wouldn’t sit right with me.”

 

There has been minimal exploration or respite. Howe is not that kind of man. Does he ever switch off? “Just by taking myself away,” he says. “When I leave the training ground or stadium, just going back to normal life and being with my kids. That’s why it’s so important they’re with me. Otherwise, I think I would lose my marbles!”

This summer was busy again and productive again and probably less stressful. In came Targett on a permanent transfer, then Nick Pope, Sven Botman and Alexander Isak, for a club-record fee of around £60million.

 

Was Eddie happy with Newcastle’s window? “Yes, I was,” he says. “It’s never perfect. You always think, ‘Could we have done this or that?’. But that’s through no fault of anyone to do with Newcastle, it’s just the window. You’re pulled and pushed and things you think might happen don’t happen. Ultimately, am I pleased with the players we’ve brought in? Yes. Definitely.”

 

Isak, the Sweden international, was the last card to fall and an indication of how things can change. “Our plan was to sign a younger striker to complement Chris and Callum (Wilson) with a view to developing him and then Callum got injured and it left us in a position where we didn’t want to leave ourselves short,” Eddie says. “So then the type of striker you want changes and you have to act. Alexander was someone we’d always liked and tracked and followed.”

 

Eddie’s task is to pivot around that change, to make players better, but the beauty of Newcastle at present is that you can see that progression everywhere. He already appreciates what Keegan meant when he talked about “riding the black and white tiger,” at this febrile, frothing club, where the next corner traditionally offers a surprise, but he is saddled on the creature’s back and thriving.

 

“You’re swinging all the time,” he says, “so you just want to make sure that you keep moving forward, you keep positive momentum. That’s why I think our style of football will be important. We’ve to give our supporters that glimpse of the future and what may be.”

 

For now, the today feels pretty good, pretty special, that sweet spot of excitement and anticipation, without too much weight or judgement. Eddie is a Newcastle man now; the right man at the right time in the right circumstances, with credit in the bank and love in the air and as we shake hands and then stare across the river to St James’, all you can see is what’s possible. At last: we are not here to just exist.

 

Long read: Shearer interview with Howe.

[ewerk 30597]

Quote

Having Vicki, his wife, and their three boys settled around him, can only help. “It’s the minimum requirement,” he says. “You have to be absolutely committed and show that by bringing your family, being part of this city and embracing everything to do with Newcastle. It wouldn’t work if I was going back to Bournemouth every two minutes. It wouldn’t sit right with me.”

 

Take note, Steve Bruce.

[wykikitoon 20129]

4 minutes ago, ewerk said:

 

Take note, Steve Bruce.

But Wor Shearer wouldn't have anything said bad about his mate Brewcie. 

[Gemmill 44850]

Good read that, cheers. I'm pretty sure Caulkin writes, or at the very least edits all of Shearer's stuff. 

 

Howe just seems like a great bloke. It'll eventually go sour and he'll be sacked (cos that's how it always ends) but I hope he's here for years to come. 

[Craig 6682]

What an absolutely brilliant read that is. 

[Dr Gloom 21915]

52 minutes ago, Gemmill said:

Good read that, cheers. I'm pretty sure Caulkin writes, or at the very least edits all of Shearer's stuff. 

 

Howe just seems like a great bloke. It'll eventually go sour and he'll be sacked (cos that's how it always ends) but I hope he's here for years to come. 

he definitely does 

[Ayatollah Hermione 13863]

Aye, I’m not sure Shearer would write all that forced grandiose bollocks off his own back  just needed some posh boy forced swearing to complete the Caulkin bingo card