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.
No more did he have to stand and watch his weary players being pulled this way and that by Manchester City in the same way that a cat plays with a piece of 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 hardens and deepens when a team is not winning. But away from the touchline and another 90 minutes of uncertainty, Howe could at least deliver a message. He could control that. He could try and set a tone for the rest of the season and heaven knows his team are in need of it.
‘There will be no negativity from me,’ said Howe. ‘There is much to play for this season and we are ready to drive forwards.’
Eddie Howe stands watching in the rain as Manchester City dominated at the Etihad
Newcastle were eliminated from the FA Cup to leave their sole focus on the Premier League
Bernardo Silva scored twice as City executed with their usual effectiveness against Newcastle
Howe was grim faced as he spoke but he may counter that all that demeanour conveys is determination. His situation is trying though and almost uniquely so. On
Saturday he and his team arrive for some warm weather training in Dubai and Howe will be acutely aware that across the Arabian gulf to the west in Saudi Arabia, Newcastle’s owners will be looking at their club’s regression this season and wondering what if anything to do about it.
The statistics work against Howe, for sure. Last season – his first complete one – Newcastle finished fourth in the Premier League and reached the final of the Carabao Cup final. Currently they are clinging on to tenth place in the table and, after yesterday’s meek defeat at City, have no prospect of domestic silverware.
Newcastle’s current run of form shows they have won six games of their last 20 in all competitions, against Wolves, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, Fulham and Sunderland.
Just as troubling, however, is the way Newcastle are playing. Undoubtedly they are hindered 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 shortage of energy, cohesion and method.
Howe faced questions about his Newcastle future and what it holds
The powerful, quick, brave Newcastle of last season are no more and the truth is that version of Howe’s team has hardly been seen at all this season. As such that is the manager’s problem to fix. It’s where, in part, he earns his money.
Newcastle’s season began with an exhilarating demolition of Aston Villa at St James’ Park on opening day and they played similarly impressively and recognisably in beating City in the Carabao Cup, Manchester United in the Premier League and PSG in the Champions League.
That 4-1 dismantling of the French champions last October was the bravura showing of the season and represented the crescendo of a run of form that also included that defeat of City and an extraordinary 8-0 demolition of Sheffield United at Bramall Lane.
That was the Newcastle that Howe built and coached so expertly last season. But as the restrictions of the Premier League’s spending rules have bitten hard at the heels of Saudi ambitions so the DNA that seemed to be so well established at the core of Howe’s side has drained away at the behest of depleted confidence and belief.
What Newcastle do is now moot. The smart thing would be to look at the man they hired in November 2021, look at his body of work, remind themselves why they chose him and indeed the heights to which his team soared last season. Too high? Not necessarily.
This season’s Champions League experience will have been invaluable for Newcastle but it is too high for them repeat
This season’s Champions League experience will have been invaluable. Too high to repeat, though, and it’s the distance Newcastle have fallen that stalks Howe now. It’s hard to move quickly in English football these days. It’s no good having petrodollars in your pocket if you can’t spend them.
The fact is that the Saudi’s first manager – if you exclude Steve Bruce – was always going to have the toughest job of any of 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 yawned wide for so long.
Howe will have felt that pressure as his team plane flew east last night from Manchester. Newcastle have ten games left this season and most are perfectly palatable. Only Tottenham at home on April 13 and Manchester United away a week later should ask them questions out of the ordinary.
Should Newcastle push upwards towards the European places, this season will doubtless be written off as a mere step change. But could Howe survive a season that saw his team finish in the bottom half? It would buck all modern trends if he did.
