Eddie Howe is determined to reward the passion of Newcastle’s fans by winning the Carabao Cup

The weekend of March 2002, when Eddie Howe suffered the knee injury that would end his playing career before the age of 30, was a good one for Newcastle United. Sir Bobby Robson’s side beat Everton 6-2 in front of 52,000 at home with Alan Shearer scoring one of the goals.

Newcastle finished fourth that season and qualified for the Champions League, proof that they haven’t always been miserable on Tyneside. Yet he has rarely been as good, as positive, as he feels now.

On Sunday, Newcastle have a chance to win their first domestic trophy since 1955 when they face Manchester United in the League Cup final and Howe is the young manager who has taken them to Wembley.

Howe’s career, his life, has not always been easy. Neither has Newcastle’s trajectory on and off the field. From that point of view, and others, they feel like a fit. Both will travel to London very aware and grateful for the opportunity they have.

“I remember going to see a specialist after my injury and he said, ‘You’re going to have to retire,'” Howe reflected this week. ‘I was 24 years old. I felt like my world had ended. So if I were transported from that person there to this moment here, I would say, “There’s absolutely no chance he could do that.”

This is one of the beauties of the sport. Second and third chances. The opportunity for talent to flourish in one way, if not necessarily another. Howe’s road to Wembley has been a long one and his club’s supporters have been even more patient.

Newcastle were there in the 1998 and 1999 FA Cup Finals only to lose 2-0 both times, to Arsenal and Manchester United. They had been there in 1976 in the League Cup only to be broken by Manchester City’s Dennis Tueart with a shot from above.

So if this opportunity feels beat, then it’s understandable. Howe says it’s not about him, but he’s not entirely right. The Evening Chronicle newspaper gave away cardboard masks of the 45-year-old man with Tuesday’s edition. At a question-and-answer session in the city earlier this month, Kevin Keegan, the last man to threaten to hand a league title to the Northeast in the late 1990s, endorsed him.

One of the first things Howe did when he accepted the job in 2021 was talk to Keegan. If that points to some humility and intelligence, then it is repeated elsewhere.

This week, in a cavernous indoor sports hall at Newcastle’s training ground, two of his players, Sean Longstaff and Dan Burn, sat down and talked about their debt to their manager. They are both Geordies. Both are on second chances on their own. Longstaff scored twice in the semi-final win against Southampton and was on the verge of tears when he spoke of a long comeback from injury. Released from the Newcastle academy at the age of 11, Burn was invited back north by Howe after building a career at Fulham, Wigan and Brighton.

Longstaff said: “The manager is someone I will always be grateful to and he has saved my career at Newcastle.” On that semi-final night I looked into Burny’s eyes and thought we were going to shed a little tear together to be honest.

“After the game I said to him: ‘Did you think we’d do this when we played each other for Wigan and Blackpool five years ago?’

‘It’s funny how football works. Being from Newcastle and doing this together makes it special.’

It’s no coincidence that Howe’s team has local representation. Newcastle, of all clubs, still feel they need a bit of that. It is an institution that is still, literally and emotionally, at the heart of its community.

Few if any football stadiums are as close to a city center as St James’ Park. Walk down Leazes Park Road, turn left into Strawberry Place and the imposing rear of Gallowgate almost blocks the light.

News recently revealed in these pages that Newcastle has acquired the land behind Gallowgate End which building on and expanding on felt important and was enthusiastically received by one as eminent as Sir John Hall. “They need to get that part back to do Gallowgate,” the former Newcastle owner, now 89, told the Chronicle. ‘We have everything in our favor. All the fans can feel that the future is ours.’

Tomorrow, London will be black and white and that is saying something, given that their opponent, Manchester United, is the best supported team in the country.

A lot about Newcastle still feels a bit complicated. The problems over his Saudi ownership will not go away and neither should they. A corner shot from the stadium is an Amnesty International bookstore. Given Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, the juxtaposition of the two couldn’t be clearer.

But football has been easy under Howe, even if a dip in form leads Newcastle into tomorrow’s showpiece as second favourite.

However, they will not lack courage. Howe teams never have. His time at Bournemouth was largely one of steady improvement. The gravity that he took over a team playing in the Premier League in front of a capacity of 11,500 was always likely to get them in the end. When he did, in 2020, Howe was ready to go and began a 15-month stint from the game that he insists was now deliberate.

“That was self-induced, my decision,” Howe said. ‘I felt like it was my time to step away from the game, get better and then come back when I felt ready and when the opportunity was there and I felt like I couldn’t turn it down. That happened with Newcastle.

Howe’s most difficult time in management was at Burnley a decade ago. When he was in his early thirties, he stepped away from the role after less than two years for personal reasons, widely accepted as a hardship coping with the passing of his mother.

When asked about her influence this week, Howe was candid, saying, “She’s on my mind before every game.” But I think that without a doubt, she will be even more in my thoughts, probably, this weekend.

“I would say 99.9 percent of me is because of her because she was my driving force growing up. She was a big, big influence on me, and I’m doing everything now really for her.

“She took me around Wembley when I was five or six, holding up the fake FA Cup, walking into the noise of the fake crowd. She was there doing that with me.

‘I don’t know if they still do it, but it was every child’s dream. But yes, it was the FA Cup. I can’t sit here and pretend it was the League Cup. But I have never forgotten that day. Wembley for me was an incredible place, a place that I was desperate to return to in some way in football.

If Newcastle’s visit is their last for a while, it will come as a surprise. Something will have gone wrong. If the club is to go where it needs to go from this point on, then an appearance in the League Cup final one day should be seen as a stage and nothing more.

At the Back Page book and souvenir shop near St James’ Park, trade has been brisk this week and last Saturday, before Newcastle played Liverpool, the shop had its busiest afternoon in years. It feels like a moment in time for one of the biggest clubs in the country and it should be.

“The love these people have for the club,” Howe said. I would love to return that love with a trophy. I was watching the Premier League Years show last night and some clips of that Kevin Keegan team came up. The football they played was incredible, but that trophy was not there.

Howe’s playing career limped on for a further five years after that injury on his Portsmouth debut at Preston 21 years ago.

“I felt so lost and isolated because I could feel very early on that my career was slipping away from me,” he recalled. ‘I was shy, introverted. I felt like I had a good football brain but not necessarily a coaching perspective, so I didn’t know what would happen. It’s hard when you look at your life now and you’re looking at moments and thinking, “I’ve gone from that to this.” It’s an incredible change, really.

It’s taken Howe a while to get here, somewhere near the top. It’s safe to say that Newcastle’s return to prominence has been rather quicker.