Newcastle United would have been Everton without Eddie Howe | OneFootball

I have found the conversations interesting around Eddie Howe in recent weeks.

So many in the media and the fanbases of rival clubs had been so grudging in any kind of praise for the job he is doing at St James’ Park.

Yet suddenly it is overwhelming that these same rival fans and journalists, pundits etc, are all but universally stating that Eddie Howe is by a country mile the best person to follow Gareth Southgate.

Eddie Howe hasn’t done anything himself these past couple of months to bring this change about, it is simply a little bit of belated honesty by so many, accepting that Howe has done an astonishing job at Newcastle United.

We all know that after an intensive process including football recruitment specialists, the Newcastle United owners narrowed it down to two choices, Unai Emery or Eddie Howe, to fill the vacancy. That vacancy came about when the clueless Steve Bruce was kicked out after yet another home defeat, to Spurs, the new NUFC ownership having been the subject of a quite ridiculous media campaign, demanding that Bruce be allowed a sentimental 1,000th game in management.

Unai Emery reluctantly turned down the Newcastle United job back in October 2021, he had just delivered Villarreal the very first trophy in their entire history and the Spanish club was in the middle of their very first Champions League campaign as well. Emery saying he couldn’t leave at that point and indeed he ended up taking Villarreal to the semi-finals, unlucky not to reach the actual Champions League final.

Eddie Howe did accept the job and started on 8 November 2021, ending a 15 month break, having left Bournemouth and traveled around various clubs in the UK and overseas, connecting with other managers/coaches and having a period of what he considered essential experience and development, before taking on his next job. Having taken Bournemouth right from the brink of dropping into non-league, all the way to the Premier League, quite astonishing.

Who would have been third choice in October/November 2021 if Eddie Howe had also said no? We’ll never know what the Newcastle United would have done, who was next on their list, if indeed there was anybody particular they had in mind.

The rest, as they say, is history.

That second-half of the 2021/22 season when not only did Eddie Howe ensure relegation was avoided, Newcastle actually picking up more points than all of the rest of the Premier League in the final 19 PL games, apart from Liverpool and Man City.

That then followed by the fourth place finish of 2022/23 and the League Cup final appearance, then last season where despite the worst season NUFC have ever experienced in terms of injuries in their entire history, Eddie Howe still managed 60 points, missing out on top four and Champions League by only eight points.

Until these more recent times of acceptance of Eddie Howe as a high performer who is clearly the best candidate for the England job, so many of Newcastle’s enemies in the media and rival fanbases etc wanted to downgrade and undermine Howe’s achievements. The underlying claim/lie that any manager could have achieved what Eddie Howe had done at Newcastle United, if given that amount of money to spend on players.

That is of course nonsense, every relatively successful club spends a lot on signings and indeed, even since Eddie Howe and the new Newcastle United owners came in, all the usual suspects (and a number of others) have spent similar or indeed far more money than NUFC. Never mind all those years, a decade and a half, where all these other clubs were building and building for the short AND long-term, whilst Mike Ashley was doing the exact opposite.

I honestly think that without Eddie Howe, Newcastle United could/would have been another Everton.

What is/was the difference between the two clubs?

Everton under new rich and ambitious owners (Moshiri backed by Usmanov) spent fortunes on players – some half a billion in a few years, backed their manager(s), tried to bridge the gap to the self-appointed elite.

Yet they have failed miserably, the very rich ownership ending up not able to spend any more riches on players, a succession of mainly very poor manager choices and with their help, so many disastrous signings made. Leaving them unable to keep buying players with money not generated by the club’s normal revenue streams, caught up in so much PSR trouble, the club carrying so much debt now, struggling to find a new owner willing to take over the absolute mess that they have ended up with now.

When something happens like Eddie Howe at Newcastle United, it is very easy AFTER he has done what he has done (so far), to not fully appreciate just what a brilliant job AND what could well have been the case if he hadn’t came in.

Make no mistake, the Ashley/Bruce legacy meant Newcastle United were getting relegated for a third time in a season they’d kicked off under Ashley.

Even with Eddie Howe trying everything he could to turn it around, after 20 PL matches Newcastle United still only had one Premier League win and 12 points in total, bottom of the league with only four months of the season remaining.

To then get 37 points and 12 wins from those final 18 Premier League matches was crazy.

Eddie Howe was inspired and his very first signing was Kieran Trippier, the football world left astonished, Howe only able to do this due to his personal relationship with the player who he’d previously signed for Burnley.

Howe’s second signing was so brave. Wilson injured on 27 December 2021 in a draw against Man U, had meant Newcastle without a single Premier League level striker. Chris Wood had a £25m buyout clause and Eddie Howe was ridiculed. Yet in Wood’s 15 PL starts that season, Newcastle picked up 29 points, whilst Wood’s old club Burnley dropped like a stone and were relegated instead of NUFC.

Who knows what could/would have happened without Eddie Howe, that astonishing Trippier coup surely helping with the further recruitment, including of course Bruno Guimaraes at the end of January 2022.

So many great signings have followed, all with Eddie Howe having the final say.

Not to mention maybe the biggest achievement of all, how Eddie Howe turned around so many players he inherited, players that Ashley and Bruce had ground down between them. Schar, Joelinton, Murphy, Almiron, Longstaff… quite remarkable, the list far longer than that of course.

Spending money is only part of the equation, if you then have poor managers spending serious cash on a series of poor players, no amount of money might save you, as we see with Everton.

Ironically, Eddie Howe was a childhood Everton fan. Imagine where they might have been now if they had plucked Howe from Bournemouth before they wasted all that cash and sent their club into such a disastrous direction?

Happily though, Eddie Howe is very much a Newcastle United fan now, the most important one of all.

I think the reality is that without Eddie Howe, there certainly wouldn’t have been any Kieran Trippier and as for any other signings, who knows if then the likes of Bruno, Botman, Pope, Tonali, Isak, Livramento, Gordon, Hall  and others would have signed?

My guess is that relegation would very likely have happened in 2021/22 if Eddie Howe hadn’t came in, with the situation so dire as we all (should!) know.

As for 71 points and Champions League football plus a cup final the following season, or 60 points last season despite a ridiculous number of missing players, you can forget all that, even if NUFC had still survived in 2021/22 without Eddie Howe.

So many fine margins in football and often the very finest of margins comes when choosing the manager.

The Newcastle United owners have in recent days reportedly reassured Eddie Howe that he continues to be the main man and will have the final say on signings.

Anything less than that reassurance would have been similar level stupidity to what has sent Everton into this disastrous spiral.