Will Newcastle owners forgive the manager if they don’t qualify for the Champions League?

For the third season we can watch a very different Newcastle, acquired by the Saudi Arabian group PIF, adding to the plethora of “oil-sponsored” clubs that continues to grow. Magpies fans have to acknowledge that after years of less than ideal results, there have been positive changes in their club. But now there has been a bit of a downturn.

In the club’s 130 year history, there have only been six times that they have been sent down a tier and Mike Ashley, who has managed the club for over a decade, has done it twice with the Magpies. But despite Ashley’s initial promises to the fans, the top tiers of the table were science fiction for them and he didn’t take them to the cups. And so in came new owners who bought an eighty per cent stake for £300m, RB Sports & Media and PCP Capital Partners own ten per cent of the club.

One of the big questions was who was going to take charge of the team, because it was clear as day that the Saudis were going to want to ‘let go of the vein’, as they are almost always fond of doing. This despite their initial statements which included words like long-term project and similar incantations that many refused to believe anyway. Not that they’ve gone in headlong, perhaps, but they’ve invested £280m in the club since the two-year tenure of manager Eddie Howe, not an exorbitant figure by Big Six standards, but still a sum that many clubs can only dream of.

What’s more, they are very likely to have to dip into their wallets again this winter. A question mark hung over the manager’s chair. It was occupied in the autumn of 2021 by the aforementioned Howe, who, although he didn’t have experience of the quality of squad that Newcastle planned to have, was considered one of the most promising coaches in England. He is now being talked about as a possible successor to Gareth Southgate and is also known for his career as a player in a Bournemouth jersey or later at Portsmouth.

It was at Bournemouth, where he ended his active playing career due to a knee problem, that he later proved to be a really talented manager and under pressure from virtually nothing built the club into the position they have a chance to be in today, from fighting for relegation in League One to taking the Cherries to the Premier League. Newcastle put their faith in him even though they were relegated in their last season with Bournemouth.

His first season with the Magpies he got Guimaraes, Wood and Bourne and Trippier in the winter, started building on them and so far most of them are the backbone of the team. In the summer they just added Willock. Newcastle ended up finishing only eleventh in the first season, but the next one Howe had already introduced his idea of football in full force, helped by another acquisition in Isaac, and the £130 million total was just a twinkle in the distance.

There was a lot of speculation over the summer as to which star would eventually end up at Newcastle, with names like Mbappé, Neymar and others being floated, but the club ended up doing things completely differently and bringing in new names instead. Moreover, under manager Howe, players like Murphy, Almiron and Joelington have finally found their feet, which is quite handy now with the absences of some mainstays.

Howe and his team “translated” their first full season into a fourth place finish and participation in the Champions League, where they couldn’t even pick up a third place in the group of death, but that’s the story of this season. In the last one, Newcastle presented us with what will adorn them in the near future, and they left the first, incomplete one behind.

Since the first summer training session, Howe has been building the team in a 4-3-3 format with intense attacking and the gain numbers in the opposition’s half were/are some of the best in the league. The wingers try to push the opposition into the middle of the pitch where they put the most pressure on the ball carrier. Magpies defend fairly high which goes hand in hand with their aggressive style. They have no problem playing patiently at the back and Guimaraes has been one of the key figures in this success. That’s roughly how one could describe the current Newcastle under an attack-minded coach, which Eddie Howe undoubtedly is.

However, this season doesn’t really prove that, although it can’t be described as a flop so far. In all of the aforementioned statistics Newcastle have deteriorated rapidly, their midfield opponents can punish them effectively this year and almost all of the big teams that the Magpies managed to beat last season have done so against them this season.

The reinforcements came in again in the summer and they are also behind one of this year’s problems, as the €64 million Tonali and €44 million Barnes haven’t played much so far and only one summer signing, Livramento, has lined up on the left flank and is playing. In addition, Tonali received a ten-month “ban” for a betting scandal and Barnes was injured before the start of the Champions League’s preliminary groups.

However, the Magpies are out of the Champions League, just as they are out of the domestic cup, and for owners “used to buying success” this is certainly starting to mark a small exclamation point, as they will obviously expect the same thing again at the end of the season, and it will be interesting to see how much those statements about long-term vision meant to them.

How much of a potential failure this year are they willing to tolerate for Howe? They’re still in touch with the Champions League, but even with their spending they’ll soon get to the point where a million dollar competition is a must for them.

Source: BBC, Newcastle United