Howe has revitalised Newcastle through good old-fashioned coaching
Newcastle United are heading for mid-table safety but, for all the money spent on players, the game-changing arrival has been the manager.
After Newcastle United’s 3-1 win against Everton on February 8, manager Eddie Howe sought to temper expectations. “It’s two wins, nothing has been achieved,” he told the press. “We’re very happy with what we’ve delivered in those two games, but now we have to focus on the next one.” A month on from that match, the run has continued. Newcastle have now won five of their last six matches, and the fears of relegation which haunted the first half of their season have now all but evaporated completely.
There are, of course, asterisks and qualifiers and they certainly aren’t everybody’s ‘second favourite team’ anymore, but what has been notable about Newcastle’s improvement over the last couple of months is that it hasn’t come about solely because of Saudi oil money. The new owners’ munificence in the January transfer window led to them spending more money than any other club in Europe during that particular time, but although that is an eye-catching headline, it doesn’t really reflect the way in which Newcastle operated in the transfer market during that breathless month.
There was what some might consider a ‘marquee signing’ in the form of Bruno Guimaraes, though his appearances in the team have been relatively limited. The key player, in terms of influence over the team, has been Kieran Trippier, whose move for the relatively low price of £12m may leave some other Premier League clubs wondering why they sat on their hands. Not all of the new transfers have been successful; we continue to wait to see what the tangible benefits of spending £25m on Chris Wood might be; his arrival doesn’t seem to have strengthened their attacking options very much and, if their intention in signing him was to weaken Burnley, that doesn’t seem to have happened either, not that this really matters to Newcastle anymore.
But for all the talk of Saudi money and of expensive new players, the key to the turnaround at St James’ Park has been the manager. Eddie Howe’s arrival at the club in November was greeted by cynical headlines, with few predicting the changes that have followed. Newcastle’s new players have been important, but Howe also seems to have been successful in eliminating the fatalism of their dressing-room.
Even where there have been bumps in the road, these have turned out to be surmountable. As mentioned above, the truly transformative player since January has been Kieran Trippier, not only for his undoubted talents as a footballer, but also for his leadership qualities, both on and off the pitch. When Trippier injured his foot during their win against Aston Villa, brows became furrowed at how much of a loss he might be over a period of weeks. He isn’t back yet – though the operation on his foot has now been performed and was successful – but there’s been little in their performances since the Villa game to suggest confidence has tailed off.
Howe seems to be overseeing a general improvement across the entire playing squad. Matt Targett and Dan Burn, players brought in during the January transfer window, have both impressed – it now seems almost certain that Targett will be making his signing permanent during the summer, and there’s been little in his performances thus far to suggest that this wouldn’t be a good idea – but this improvement has extended into some of the players who were malfunctioning earlier this season. Joelinton appears transformed. Alain Saint-Maximin remains a talismanic performer, with the potential to bend the course of a match to his will. The transformation of this team certainly doesn’t say much for the managerial chops of Steve Bruce, who’s already labouring as the manager of West Brom in the Championship.
Ranking the Newcastle squad by likeliness of a summer sale
Of course, digging a team out of a hole at the bottom of the table is how Eddie Howe made his name in the first place at Bournemouth. What is really fascinating is what happens next, because heading into the top half of the Premier League and potentially towards the European places is uncharted territory for him, and the challenges are about to get much greater. The arrival of Dan Ashworth from Brighton to finally fill the Director of Football role should lead to greater coherence in their summer transfer dealings, but there will continue to be opportunists seeking to prise the blank cheque book open, and reports from all over the place that ‘bigger names’ could be drafted in to replace the parts that already seem to be functioning pretty well.
The ownership of the club remains as troubling as it was when they completed their purchase, and any improvement made by the team on the pitch cannot simply be decoupled from this. Amanda Staveley’s comments concerning Roman Abramovich and the sale of Chelsea were either incredibly stupid, proof of the effects of sportswashing, or both. And Mohammed Bin Salman refusing a call with US President Joe Biden earlier in the week was hardly a good look, while the growing war in Ukraine is shining a less than complimentary light upon the Saudi government’s activities in Yemen, too. The owners of Newcastle United may be best advised to keep their mouths shut rather than opening them in the way in which Staveley did, should they wish to avoid further scrutiny of where their loyalties rest at a time when the world is being pushed to choose a side over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The irony of where Newcastle are right now is that it didn’t really need Saudi involvement to get to here. The amounts of money spent have not been that vast. Mike Ashley was a pretty bad owner for Newcastle, that much is commonly agreed, but none of the new faces at St James’ Park would have been out of the club’s financial league without Saudi money. Ashley could have (but never would have) spent the money that has been spent, and any other new owner could have done the same.
And yes, this is uncomfortable; it’s uncomfortable for all of us. Some would say that football fans shouldn’t be put in the position of having to think about this sort of thing when all they want to do is watch football. Perhaps those who flew their Saudi flags at St James’ Park with glee and whatabouted their way through the takeover should have thought about that sooner, because this is precisely where sportswashing gets you, in the end, even though few would have guessed how quickly the global situation would deteriorate in November.
But it is possible to hold these two thoughts in your head at the same time. Amanda Staveley has told us all exactly what she thinks, and that is what it is. In strict football terms, Eddie Howe has been extremely impressive since he took control of the team, and the players brought in are already at the point of achieving the minimum target of avoiding relegation from the Premier League, though signing new players quite clearly hasn’t been the only reason for this revival. Some will argue that this is all that matters. Some will argue that football is close to an irrelevance in a time when war looms so large on the horizon. The truth is somewhere between these two poles.
