Just as club eased fears over spending rules and loss of key players, manager has become one of favourites for England job
By Luke Edwards, Northern Football Writer16 July 2024 • 6:59pm
When Newcastle United kicked the final ball of last season at Brentford, the players and staff stood in front of their adoring fans on the pitch believing they had secured European football for a second successive year.
Newcastle’s desire to see gradual and sustainable progress under their Saudi Arabian owners remained intact and manager Eddie Howe’s stock – at least for those who understood the damage a crippling injury list had done to the team’s hopes of achieving another top-four finish – remained high.
What followed, starting with Manchester United’s surprise win over Manchester City in the FA Cup final that denied Newcastle their European ticket, has been a shock. There have been arguments, stress and tension behind the scenes, as Newcastle struggled with one problem after another.
A dark cloud has hung over the summer. There has been upheaval in the boardroom, a dangerous flirtation with a profit and sustainability rules (PSR) breach that would have led to a 10-point penalty punishment, transfer speculation surrounding virtually all of their key players and now doubts about Howe’s future at St James’ Park.
Howe not consulted over Mitchell move
Howe has always said, publicly, but even more forcefully in private, that he does not want to move into international management at this stage.
Newcastle are adamant they see him as their manager for a long-term project and will resist any attempt by the Football Association to poach him for the national side.
Howe will have a decision to make if the FA call him to replace Gareth Southgate. He wants to be England manager one day and while the timing might not feel right now, will he be worried he won’t get another chance?
That is the great unknown. It is easy to say you don’t want a job that has never been offered to you and until he publicly rules himself out of the running to replace Southgate, there is bound to be uncertainty about the true level of Howe’s commitment to Newcastle.
He has lost his main ally on the board this summer following the departure of Amanda Staveley and that is understood to have hit him hard. He also still needs to work through the parameters of his relationship with new sporting director Paul Mitchell, who has replaced Dan Ashworth. Mitchell’s appointment this month had nothing to do with Howe – he was only told about it the day before it was announced.
There are also concerns about how much money he will have to spend this summer given the club’s well-documented problems with PSR and the enforced sale of a player he really liked in midfielder Elliot Anderson to Nottingham Forest.
Howe is due to speak to the media later this week from the club’s pre-season training camp in Germany. It will be fascinating to see how he responds to questions about his future and there will be some concern from supporters he could still leave for the challenge of managing the national team.
Loss of ally Staveley leaves a void
Staveley had already been pushed to the periphery at St James’ Park. She was the public face of the takeover and helped force it through back in 2021, despite widespread opposition given the controversial nature of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF). But she had no prior experience of running a football club and people had been appointed to do the jobs she had initially taken on in the early days of the project.
The most important of those is chief executive Darren Eales, who has brought in a new sporting director he knows well in Mitchell, who in turn has brought in a new head of performance in David Bunce.
There is a dedicated board of directors, of which Staveley was just one, and her influence had been on the wane for some time before her exit was announced last week.
What Newcastle will lack in the wake of her departure is a human touch. She was a people person behind the scenes and brought everyone together. She was also Howe’s champion and fought his battles in the boardroom.
Newcastle will look, feel and sound like a colder, more corporate entity without her as a driving force, as well as a figure fans could relate to. They knew Staveley wanted the best for the club and the city and supporters have less emotional attachment to those left behind to run things.
Questions are starting to be asked about progress stalling under the PIF. Is it as interested as it claimed to be at the start? Or has PSR, combined with new rules to curtail sponsorship deals linked to owners clipped its wings?
Newcastle cannot operate like Chelsea and Manchester City did before them and closing the gap on the richest clubs in England and Europe is so much harder as a result. Saudi chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan said he wanted Newcastle to be the “number one” club in Europe, but it is hard to see how they can do that in the short to medium term given the financial restrictions in place.
Eales said: “As far as the PIF are concerned – and Jamie Reuben on behalf of [co-owners] the Reuben family – they are committed.
“This is an ownership group that has got a big portfolio of companies. In one sense, on a scale of investment, it’s probably one of their smallest, but in terms of profile and their interest, it’s one of their highest.
“We’re excited. I’ve spoken about the end of the cycle with PSR and this is a big year for us now going forward as we go on that journey to become a club competing for trophies and being in Europe every season. That’s got to be our aim going forward.”
Concrete news on the planned expansion of St James’ Park would be a step in the right direction.
There have been concerns over Anthony Gordon following the interest shown in him from boyhood club Liverpool Credit: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images
Fears over big-name exits and PSR breaches
Newcastle were in a panic in the last few days of June, desperately trying to bring in £60 million in profit to prevent a PSR breach and potential hefty points penalty. They were in real trouble, only to escape in the last 48 hours with the sale of Yankuba Minteh to Brighton and Anderson to Nottingham Forest. It led to a huge collective sigh of relief because Howe had feared losing someone like Bruno Guimarães, Alexander Isak or Anthony Gordon instead.
Newcastle have no need to sell any of their crown jewels and can now focus on recruiting players to improve the squad. It hurt to lose players in June but it was the lesser of two evils.
There are concerns about Gordon’s desire to join his boyhood club Liverpool, but Newcastle sources do not believe he will return from England duty agitating to leave and it will be pointed out to him that, for all the talk, Liverpool failed to make a bid for him last month. Bids for Bruno and Isak will be rejected out of hand.
“We did what we needed to do and we are compliant,” said Eales. “Going forward we are into a new cycle and we do not want to be leaving ourselves in that situation again in such tight circumstances.
“We did not want to lose those players but again we had to do the deals to leave the squad in the best place possible for Eddie.
“In that respect, with Bruno, Isak, Gordon, Joelinton and [Sandro] Tonali to come back, we’ve got Lloyd Kelly coming in as an addition already, Lewis Hall and Tino Livramento, we’ve got the squad to kick on.
“But we are always looking to add to that and that is the challenge now. That is what we need to do, we need to find ways to improve and that is what we are doing with Eddie and Paul.
“We are having those discussions. Paul Mitchell has come onboard and it is for him and Eddie to discuss what sort of targets they want, the areas they want to strengthen. It’s then important to have those meetings to decide where we are going to allocate those resources to strengthen our squad.”
