IAN LADYMAN: Newcastle are a shadow of their former selves and it’s the manager’s job to fix it… keeping Eddie Howe would be the smart choice but could he survive a bottom-half finish? It would buck all modern trends if he did
Half an hour after his ordeal in the rain in Manchester, Eddie Howe sat in a chair in a press conference room and it must have felt like a refuge.
He no longer had to stand and watch his tired players being pulled back and forth by Manchester City, much like a cat playing with a string.
The questions Howe faced were not entirely comfortable. They were about the future and what it holds, and deep down Howe knows that no manager can ever really know, can never really be sure.
And this is a feeling that only becomes stronger and deeper when a team does not win. But without the touchline and another 90 minutes of uncertainty, Howe could at least get a message across. He could control that. He could be trying to set a tone for the rest of the season and heaven knows his team needs that.
“There will be no negativity from me,” Howe said. “There is a lot to play for this season and we are ready to move forward.”
Eddie Howe stands in the rain watching as Manchester City dominate at the Etihad
Newcastle were knocked out of the FA Cup and focused solely on the Premier League
Bernardo Silva scored twice as City executed with their usual effectiveness against Newcastle
Howe had a grim face as he spoke, but he might counter that all that attitude shows is determination. However, his situation is difficult and almost unique. On
On Saturday he and his team arrive for warm-weather training in Dubai and Howe will be well aware that across the Arabian Gulf to the west in Saudi Arabia, Newcastle’s owners are looking at their club’s decline this season will look and wonder what they can do about it. It.
The statistics certainly work against Howe. Last season – his first full season – Newcastle finished fourth in the Premier League and reached the final of the Carabao Cup final. They are currently clinging to 10th in the table and, after yesterday’s meek defeat at City, have no prospect of domestic silverware.
Newcastle’s current form shows that they have won six of their last 20 games in all competitions, against Wolves, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, Fulham and Sunderland.
But just as worrying is the way Newcastle are playing. No doubt they have been hampered by injuries to key players such as goalkeeper Nick Pope, Kieran Trippier, Joeli)nton, Callum Wilson and now Tino Livramento.
But that is not unusual at this time of year. It is not individual absences that seem to be holding Newcastle back at the moment, but a collective lack of energy, cohesion and method.
Howe has faced questions about his future at Newcastle and what it entails
The powerful, fast and brave Newcastle of last season is no more and the truth is that this season’s version of Howe’s team is barely in sight. As such, that is the manager’s problem to solve. It’s where he partially makes his money.
Newcastle’s season started with an exciting demolition of Aston Villa at St James’ Park on the opening day and they played equally impressively and recognisably, beating City in the Carabao Cup, Manchester United in the Premier League and PSG in the Champions League.
That 4-1 defeat to the French champions last October was the bravado of the season and represented the crescendo of a run of form that also included the defeat of City and an extraordinary 8-0 defeat of Sheffield United at Bramall Lane.
That was the Newcastle that Howe so expertly built and coached last season. But as the constraints of the Premier League’s spending rules have dealt a blow to Saudi ambitions, the DNA that seemed so well-established in the core of Howe’s squad has ebbed away at the behest of depleted trust and faith.
What Newcastle does is now up for debate. The smart thing would be to look at the man they hired in November 2021, his body of work, remind themselves why they picked him and indeed the heights his team rose to last season. Too high? Not necessary.
This season’s Champions League experience will have been invaluable for Newcastle, but it is too high to be repeated
This season’s Champions League experience will have been invaluable. But too high to repeat, and it is the distance Newcastle have gone that Howe now haunts. It’s hard to move quickly in English football these days. There’s no point in having petrodollars in your pocket if you can’t spend them.
The fact is that the Saudi’s first manager – if you discount Steve Bruce – was always going to have the toughest job in the club’s new era. Howe was always going to be challenged to bridge a gap between Newcastle and the established top order that had gaped wide for so long.
Howe must have felt that pressure when his team plane flew east from Manchester last night. Newcastle still have ten games left this season and most of them are quite digestible. Only Tottenham at home on April 13 and Manchester United away a week later should ask them unusual questions.
Should Newcastle take a step further towards the European places, this season will undoubtedly be written off as just a step change. But could Howe survive a season in which his team finished in the bottom half? If he were to do that, it would go against all modern trends.