‘Uncomfortable’ Howe sends clear warning to Newcastle stars as Shearer delivers ‘shocking’ verdict
Newcastle United manager Eddie Howe has warned his players that they do not have much “credit in the bank” following last season’s heroics.
Howe is under increasing pressure at St James’ Park as they suffered to another defeat on Boxing Day. Their 3-1 loss at the hands of Nottingham Forest was their eighth in their last 12 games across all competitions.
Newcastle’s home form has been the only saving grace for Howe this term, but their seven-game home winning run in the Premier League came to an end on Boxing Day as former striker Chris Wood scored a match-winning hat-trick.
Club legend Alan Shearer took to X post-match to slam Newcastle for their “shocking” performance against Forest amid reports suggesting PIF are ‘unhappy’ with the job Howe’s been doing this season.
Howe admitted post-match that Newcastle’s recent form makes him “feel uncomfortable” and the “answer” to their issues “lies within”.
“Whenever you lose games it is an uncomfortable feeling, when your team is not at its peak,” Howe told reporters.
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“Concerned? You deal with a lot of emotions when you don’t get the result you want. I am feeling that. I like to keep my thoughts and analyse properly and make tweaks and changes.
“My gut feeling is that the answer lies within. The players we have are good enough. We have suffered those injuries. We have not had it easy. We are not at our best physically.
“We were not quite at our best and when you are not you get punished. There was a lot of good first half but the last action or pass was missing and that was frustrating. We wanted to make it 2-0 and in a commanding position.
“It has been an intense period. The players have physically given everything and we have acknowledged we have not been at our best and that is all we can do. We can now return to the training pitch for the first time in what feels like months. We need training ground time to refine missing parts of our game.
“Some of our decision-making was off, positioning or technically. It wasn’t a big tactical issue, we didn’t deal with moments in the game.
“I’ll be prepared to make any change that I think can benefit either the performance or the result and of course players are accountable for what they deliver.
“No amount of credit in the bank is big enough, you have to earn everything you get from the game. I’m a firm believer in that so players know they have to perform and we have to change our short-term form for sure.
“It will be nice to build up to games and training. I think we have suffered not having training ground time. And the inability to rotate the team has caught up with us.”
