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Eddie Howe does not need any of us to defend him, his record at the club both in terms of results and player development speak for themselves. If it is not good enough for some people so be it. I am sure he would rotate more if he felt the squad was strong enough to allow it. I am sure he would substitute quicker if he felt his bench was strong enough. I am sure he would have evolved our tactics if the summer hadn’t been such a disaster and he had more time on the training pitch. Yes we spent a lot of money in the summer and it hasn’t all worked out yet, but the timing of the sale (which I doubt was Howe’s doing) and the fact we lost a world-class striker are not excuses, just reality. Our whole game was built around Isak. Perhaps it is because I have waited 55 years to see Newcastle win a trophy that I have more patience than some, but I believe Eddie has done way more than enough to be given the respect of being allowed to continue to lead the team forward. He always said he would stay at the club as long as he felt wanted and I believe he would. Eddie is not my king, but he as my upmost respect and gratitude for what he has done for the club and how he has represented us.

To those who think what he is saying is reasonable, that may or may not be the case, but there is absolutely no need to say them publicly. Added to that his quotes aimed at the players too. It is all Mitchell-esque and can only cause problems

Newcastle United chief executive David Hopkinson says he does not have a stance on the future of head coach Eddie Howe, but the club are "not looking to make a change at the moment". Although Newcastle reached the last 16 of the Champions League, and progressed to the semi-finals of the Carabao Cup for a third time in four seasons, this has been a bruising campaign for Howe's side. After initially holding their own against Barcelona, Newcastle capitulated at the Nou Camp this month - suffering a 7-2 defeat - before losing 2-1 against bitter rivals Sunderland a few days later. Howe and his players were booed off by a section of supporters at St James' Park following the damaging Tyne-Wear derby loss, which has left Newcastle12th in the Premier League. But the hierarchy remains behind Howe, who led Newcastle to Champions League qualification in 2023 and 2025, and ended the club's seven-decade wait to win a major domestic trophy by lifting the EFL Cup last season. While his backing was hardly unequivocal, this week Hopkinson stressed Newcastle were currently "not having those conversations" about a change of manager. "I don't have a stance on his future," he said. "What I can tell you is that the derby loss hurt. "We take it seriously. There's nothing within us that thinks, 'Well, it's just three points and on we go'. It has resonated. "I spent a couple of hours in a one-on-one lunch recently with Eddie and we talked through a multitude of things, including that. "Eddie is our manager. I expect to have a great run to the end of the season here and we will talk about the future when it's time. "Right now, we're focused on this season's competition." 'Any player under contract is going to leave on our terms' Newcastle still have seven games to play this season as they bid to make a late push for a European spot. The club are planning for both eventualities in the transfer market, whether they qualify or miss out. Howe has been involved in planning for these scenarios alongside sporting director Ross Wilson, with another busy summer on the cards. Newcastle need to strengthen the ageing spine of the side while there are also doubts surrounding the long-term futures of a number of key players, including midfielder Sandro Tonali. The Italian effectively has four years left on his contract - if Newcastle trigger a 12-month extension, as expected - which puts the club in a strong position. But it was just last summer that Newcastle - eventually - buckled and sold top scorer Alexander Isak to Liverpool for a British-record £125m after he went "on strike" to force through a move to Anfield. Hopkinson was appointed a few weeks after Isak's exit and felt it was a "good sale" - even if Newcastle have struggled to adapt to life without the striker after spending a combined £124m on forwards Nick Woltemade and Yoane Wissa. Strategic player trading is clearly going to become a key part of Newcastle's model moving forward, but Hopkinson warned any individuals seeking a move will not simply get their way. "If an Isak-like scenario presents itself again, any player under contract is going to leave on our terms," he said. "We're going to maximise the opportunity that might represent for the club." Huge gap still to bridge Hopkinson was speaking following the release of the club's latest set of financial results for the year ending June 2025. The accounts detail how the sale of the leasehold to St James' Park and adjacent land to PZ Holdings Limited, a subsidiary company, contributed to the club posting a £34.7m profit after tax. The club insist this was carried out with a view to either redeveloping the stadium or building a new ground, rather than complying with the Premier League's outgoing profitability and sustainability rules (PSR). Newcastle's chief financial officer Simon Capper said "the motivation was very much to reorganise our property assets and get them into the correct legal boxes to allow us to go forward with our potential development and to facilitate that with financing". Newcastle ultimately announced club-record revenues of £335.3m, but still have a huge gap to bridge on the status quo. Liverpool, by comparison, generated £703m in the same period, while Manchester City brought in more in commercial revenue (£340.4m) than Newcastle raised in overall income. It is a timely reminder of the challenge Newcastle face to somehow realise Hopkinson's vision of competing for the biggest prizes by 2030. "When I think about our competitors, they are formidable and they have already got a head start on us, but all they've got is a head start on us and we've got a tremendous opportunity for growth right in front of us," he added. "We've used the phrase 'headroom' in terms of a player budget, but what I also look at is the commercial opportunity. We have significant headroom to catch up. "It means we've got work harder. We've got to work smarter with high conviction and energy every single day to capture that headroom. We've got to catch these guys." 'Hierarchy clearly expect strong finish' Analysis by Ciaran Kelly From the outside looking in, it may appear that Newcastle's season is as good as over. That is certainly not the view within the club. Not only will Howe be desperate to generate some momentum and finish the campaign on a high - the hierarchy, clearly, expect a strong return from the final seven games of the season. Newcastle will feel the financial hit of likely missing out on the Champions League, but qualifying for Europe remains a priority target. It is still a realistic one, too, with Newcastle just four points off seventh place as a relentless schedule finally eases. Newcastle were fighting on four fronts as recently as last month, but Howe's side will be afforded more recovery time and more time on the training pitches in the coming weeks. This is where Howe has previously come into his own, and Hopkinson maintained "we are not distracting ourselves with speculation about what we may or may not do in the summer". However, given the glowing terms chief executive has previously spoken about Howe, who he called a "special" manager in December, it was not exactly a resounding show of faith.

Terrible, idiotic thing to say. We need things calmed down not ramped up, the end of the season was already going to be a shit storm with all the player speculation and now we will have this as well. Plus disrespectful and risking losing a great manager. Ultimate own goal.

To be fair, he is so full of himself I can imagine him verbalising it exactly like that!

yeh, adu as well. Come on Nick!

unfortunately the really sad thing is that the original tweet is true. The broadcasters and sponsors are most interested in the clubs with the biggest global following and will therefore do what they can to make those clubs successful. And the more that media/broadcasters run the game and can influence the agenda (eg unsettling players to get them moves). More and more rules are coming in - beyond the financial - which are making this happen. A good example is the removal of the cup-tied rule which benefits clubs who can afford big money signings in January. this table from football-observatory gives an indication of how far we are behind in this aspect too... continued on following post

It really feels that the club needs a reset in terms of realistic expectations. I am guessing that when PIF took over they really believed that, over time, we could become the next PSG or Manchester City. They probably thought that for a relatively small ongoing financial input they would get high visibility and an investment that would continue to grow in value. But I can’t help thinking that have lost that belief now as the realities of the impact of all the obstacles put in our way has become more and more apparent. They will certainly want to protect their investment and will continue to provide us with the money to do so in terms of ongoing costs. But how much will they be prepared to invest in projects such as the training ground, academy and new stadium which will take years to repay themselves? The way I see it is that the squad we have now is still nowhere near the level it needs to be at to sustain a challenge both domestically in Europe. Mistakes have been made, but PSR/SCR and all of the other rules put in place are designed to make it incredibly difficult if not impossible for clubs like us to do so. We can argue over tactics, substitutions and the like, but changing manager is not going to solve the core issues and in the short-term will just add to the problems we face this summer. Personally, for the future, I would prefer us to target a top-eight finish and the domestic cups and budget on that. If we make Europe, brilliant, but let’s not make it a necessity. We will need to accept that some players will not want to join and some will leave for “bigger clubs”, but so be it. They are going to do that anyway. Perhaps being a fan might be more enjoyable that way?

Any professional club worth its salt and wanting to be a success would not be making decisions based on losing derby matches in the League. It really “hurts” the fans, but in the context of the club as a whole they are no different to any other loss. Hopefully the club can see that.

the difference being that these analysts present themselves as self-appointed experts whereas people on here generally don’t. Well apart from TCD anyway.

Although Adam Cleary is one of the better self-styled football analysts on YouTube I still can’t get passed the way he makes statements as if they are facts when they are only his opinions. His opinion on how we should try and fix our “losing control” issues would have made for a more interesting video, perhaps he doesn’t have the solution. And if he does, perhaps he should give Eddie a ring.

I think everybody can see the issue, it is about how it is solved. Intensity allowed us to punch above our weight but is demonstrably not sustainable particularly when we have more matches to play. some people don’t believe Howe sees the issue or can do anything about it and want him to be replaced, but I - and many others - believe he can or at the very least should be given more time to try. a hybrid style of sometimes pressing and sometimes playing a more controlled and less progressive game (without going all-out defence) would seem a possible way forward, but I’m sure Eddie and his team know better than any of us.

The other thing that needs to be taken into account when assessing the situation is the significant extra travelling that we need to do compared to the London teams. This must impinge on the amount of training/preparation time as well as adding to fatigue and potentially the likelihood of injuries.

I have no doubt that Howe would manage fine with all the games if he had Man City’s squad and Pep would struggle like Howe if he had our squad. But as PSR/SCR makes it hugely difficult for us to improve our squad without extra income we need to find an alternative approach. I didn’t watch the League Cup Final on Sunday, but from what I have read and watched Man City played with great intensity for the first twenty minutes of the second-half whilst not attempting to do much at all (attacking wise) for the rest of the game. Somehow, I think we need to develop a similar approach where we play with intensity for certain periods but then have a method of playing which allows us to keep a measure of control to the best of our abilities. It is not possible to play with full intensity throughout in every game and falling into a low block, particularly towards the end of the game, just invites trouble.

Absolutely, everyone there is entitled to do what they want within the law and the rules of the ground. However, I don’t think it will encourage players to stay at the club and may well put others off from joining.

But that proves the point about expectations. The great years under Keegan raised expectations that made the Dalglish and Gullit years seem worse. It is the same principle. And at that time we were financially better off in a comparative sense. Probably still in the top ten rich list and with no great gaps between the teams. I would say our standards are higher than they were then but that does not mean matches like Sunday will not happen. There were bad games under Keegan too. Nobody wants to lose to Sunderland, but we are making ourselves look “small time” by reacting so strongly. There were plenty of comments on this forum ridiculing Sunderland fans for the importance they were placing on this match (“their Cup Final”), but then people reacting as if we had just lost one.

Whatever happens we need to get as many points as possible and get as high as possible in the table otherwise we run the danger of frittering away our hard-earned Champions League millions by losing merit payments.

Unfortunately we are caught in a PSR/SCR/coefficient trap which is designed to ensure that this is exactly what happens once a team gets some success. This is how the media/broadcasters and the clubs with the largest worldwide fan bases want it to work and why they will do their best to ensure the best players are at the “biggest” clubs who then dominate all the competitions. It’s all about money. I get the fury over the match on Sunday and I was raging myself, but I really think that Howe has done a fantastic job of making us “disruptors” and changing manager would be a mistake. And I believe a number of the players let him down badly on the day and I am not sure that he should be blamed for that.

I always thought that the (seemingly disappeared) slow handclap was more threatening- perhaps we should re-introduce that to the game to let the players know that we are a tad disappointed with their efforts

The thing I just can’t get my head around is why people are talking about this season as if it has been some sort of disaster. The League hasn’t finished yet, 5th Round FAC, SF of League Cup and through to the k-o stages of the Champions League. How many seasons do you think we’ve had since World War 2 which have been better? Can’t be bothered to check. but there will not be that many.

All the abuse on social media and the booing at the match which is also being used by the media to crank up the pressure on him. I don’t care what Arsenal fans did, but their abuse of Wenger was even more shocking.

And, if the worst was to happen, what will other reputable managers think when they look at the way he has been treated after all he has done. As you say Howe really is the perfect fit for us and I wish people would appreciate more that the decisions and approach he takes are largely due to the restrictions he is working under. So sad that he has become a victim of his own hard work and success.

couldn’t agree more - the lack of respect for what he has achieved and the amount of work he has put in is shocking. I really don’t believe any other manager around could have achieved more with the resources available. If he resigns because he does not feel appreciated or is sacked because of all the negativity it will be a disaster for the club and put the fan base in a very bad light.