IAN LADYMAN: It’s dramatic and unfair but can Eddie Howe afford to miss out on the top four?

Mark Hughes is doing a good job in League Two with Bradford City, but he once took Eddie Howe’s job as manager of one of the richest football clubs in the world.

In 2008, when Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Mansour bought Manchester City, Hughes was in charge and when we met last summer he looked back with fond but also educated eyes.

“I should have spent even more on players,” he laughed. “And I should have realized how quickly the club wanted to move.”

The second point was serious. Hughes was trying to lay a foundation in his place, but the City owners wanted progress in exchange for his money and at the first sign of regression, in the winter of 2009, they sacked him. The Welshman had been in office for 18 months.

At Newcastle, Howe is doing a good job and will get more time and possibly a new contract. He has been at St James’ Park since November 2021 and has the club in fifth position with two games fewer than Tottenham, the team above them.

Howe’s efforts could not have been more impressive. Newcastle were in relegation danger when he arrived. However, the opportunity presented to him now is not something he would like to miss.

Qualifying for the Champions League was not a priority this season. It was not expected. But now that it’s a possibility, it looks like Howe needs to push his team to the limit.

Consider the likely outlook for the Premier League next season. Manchester City and Arsenal are unlikely to back down. Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea can be expected to improve. Tottenham? Well, they could go either way.

The image of a stronger and more competitive top four is clear. So if Newcastle fail to do it this season, there’s no reason to suspect they’ll be easier next time. They have been great.

Their current point tally of 47 after 26 games would have had them in or around the top four last season as well. However, this year’s table has been undeniably warped by problems at Liverpool and Chelsea and by the early days of a new era at Old Trafford.

So Newcastle must be among them this time. The Saudi-owned club is fabulously wealthy but subject to the same financial fair play restrictions as any other.

So the tens of millions of pounds available to Champions League clubs, drawn from prize money, ticket sales and television revenue, will form part of Newcastle’s summer spending if they can qualify.

And that’s before we even start talking about the magnet that Champions League football is for European players looking to switch clubs.

Newcastle is a superb city but it is not fashionable when it comes to elite footballers. It is well behind London and a distance behind Manchester. That makes it harder to sell to players. Money helps. But also Europe.

The challenge for Howe now, therefore, is clear. Take Newcastle to the Champions League this season and he can accommodate himself. If he doesn’t, then the start of the next season starts to look very important.

Any sign of stalling or change in trajectory has already started on Tyneside and it automatically begins to look a little less safe.

This sounds dramatic, premature, and unfair, and in fact, it is all of those things. If Newcastle beat United at St James’ Park on Sunday night, they will be third. It sounds extraordinary to even say that.

They have already been to Wembley in the Carabao Cup final. Whichever way you look at it, that represents success. However, with that success comes a change in perception, which is good, and a change in expectation, which is often not.

Newcastle’s owners have been sensible in a way that City’s were not always at the start. Their recruiting has been strong and strategic. There have been no ‘declaration’ signatures, just clever ones.

All of that bodes well, as does the fact that Howe was the owners’ chosen manager. Hughes was not. Abu Dhabi inherited it.

Having said all that, the Saudis did not buy Newcastle United to stay in eighth place for the long term. They bought it to win the league and become great European players.

Sports washing does not usually accept a good effort. That doesn’t make everyone listen to you.

Howe has taken Newcastle further than anyone would have expected this season. Along with Mikel Arteta, Erik ten Hag and Thomas Frank, he is in the shakeup for coach of the year.

But the terrain can change quickly in soccer. Between now and the end of May, opportunity strikes Howe and his players. He feels quite important that they take it.

WHY I AM SIGNING ARSENAL STAY LOW

Manchester City’s win over Arsenal in February felt like a pivotal moment in the title race, but it didn’t turn out that way.

Arsenal won the next six league games, scoring 19 goals. That’s the champion way. However, the widespread opinion that Mikel Arteta’s team must collapse if he doesn’t want to win the league is false.

In fact, they could play reasonably well and still come up short. The last two times City have had to push hard to win the Premier League, they have won their remaining 11 games in 2019 and eight of them (drawing three) in 2022. If they do the same this time, they will rack up between 88 and 94 points. .

That means Arsenal, by a conservative estimate, will need another 21 or 22 of their remaining 10 matches to prevail. Three of those games are at Liverpool, City and Newcastle, so for Arsenal the challenge is real.

They could win six, draw three, lose one and easily finish second. The champions are eight points behind, but if they win their game and then beat Arsenal at home, the difference is two. That’s why my money stays on the blue team.

DAY WE HAD OUR TAGS AGAINST FRANCE

Mike Keegan’s grim reporting on Manchester United’s former training ground, The Cliff, brought to mind an episode from two decades ago.

In France with United before a Champions League match against Nantes, the English media played against our counterparts. Our agent was ex-United midfielder Mickey Thomas, but he had been out the night before and was quite ‘unwell’ by the corner pennant.

We were then taken to a lavish lunch at the town hall. We met the mayor. Two weeks later, before the second leg, we asked United to reciprocate, but the best they could do was fish and chips at Harry Ramsden’s, at the end of East Lancs Road.

If the French weren’t impressed (and they were), they took it out on us when we met the next day at The Cliff. They beat us 5-0 and I tore my hamstring after three minutes. Even when he was young he was old.

He picked from the shelf this week the Picador Book of Sports Writing, from 1996. Inside is a beautifully written essay by the late Hugh McIlvanney on George Best and other things.

Written shortly after the formation of the Premier League, McIlvanney pokes fun at our great clubs. “Nothing obscures the truth that their overwhelming priority is profit,” he observed.

Then comes a sweeping generalization about game standards. “The home game is technically impoverished,” he said.

Since then, some things have stayed the same, but happily others have not. Premier League football is far from bankrupt and we are lucky to have it.

EFL attendance speaks to the strength of our football pyramid and is encouraging.

A proposal by broadcaster DAZN to show all games live on television, including those on Saturday at 3pm, threatens that.

Clubs will be tempted by the TV cash on offer up front, but a word of warning: once we start losing our customers who pay at the turnstiles on a Saturday, we may never get them back.