I suspect there’s a variety of reasons behind Howe’s departure but I think the PSR rules must be hugely frustrating to deal with. All the media comments yesterday were that ‘you can’t keep on selling your best players’. I’d agree entirely with that but I’d be amazed if our current owners want to do that. They spent big initially & you could say that’s causing us issues now. That spending brought the success we’ve all craved & some momentum to the club’s progress. But it also took us over the spending rules & we had to sell Anderson & Minteh. Even being in the Champions League twice hasn’t helped put us in a much stronger position. Selling 3 key players at once is football suicide but seems to be required to stay on the right side of the rules. But that just means we’re going round in circles & any momentum has stalled. I’m sure the owners would like to spend more but they can’t. Being like Brighton, Brentford & Bournemouth just means you have a ceiling of achievement, get a patronising pat on the head by the top 6 clubs & then have to start again because they buy all your best players because the can offer higher wages due to years if making profits from buying success when there were no PSR rules. No wonder Howe had enough! It could be years/decades before we can spend at the higher level needed, even though we have the money now! Currently, our ‘new’ model is just the same one as under Ashley but we have far more money available that we aren’t allowed to spend! Definitely corrupt!
As always a great piece Mick. I keep coming back to something you said in your tribute to Kevin Keegan which I think nails this whole situation. - Newcastle could be one of the biggest clubs in the country, if not Europe and the world, were it not for the fact that they are so badly run.
He built a fantastic team but wasn't allowed by the financial skullduggery of the PL to keep the best parts of it intact or add to it and make it stronger, all momentum was stripped away and lost. Once word got out that the Saudi pockets were off limits it became impossible to sell the project to the players we needed to continue. Howe never got the chance to find out what could have been acheived if real investment was allowed and he would know building from scratch again would be many more times more difficult now that the players can see little evidence of a growing club. The project is officially suspended and will remain so until someone actually gets those big infrastructure projects underway. Expectations for next season should be similar to those of the teams around us, 40 points please.
Perfectly summed up. I couldn't have put it better. Those running the club have a lot to answer for and I, for one, have had enough of the C.E.O's bull.
Agreed. And how many time have we had a ‘new’ CEO/ Director of Football who do 6 months & then clear off? They’re even less loyal than players & managers. So they’ll instigated a ‘new’ model but won’t oversee it until the end, leaving everyone else to mop it up. Happens all the time, from Dan Ashworth onwards, so don’t put any faith in our current two doing a good job. It’s true football men like Howe & the true fans who suffer. That’s modern football for you. Joy!
It’s sad we’ve just been crushed under the wheels of PSR /SCR and poor Eddie has understandably had a gutful , but we will always have the carabao and the CL trips
Well said Mick. My concern is of the timing. I can only assume there will be more moving on. Hall to Man U persists, not forgetting we thought Tino was a shoe in to go after last season, and now Big Joe supposedly wants out. Its almost as if PIF are having firesale before flogging us. More importantly our song repertoires have all gone for a Burton. Even black and white army needs blue inserting somewhere.
Since the turn of the year, when everybody realised the summer recruitment was pants, there seems to have been a foreboding in the air about the colossal waste of money involved in that added to the fact that there was little or no back up for the first 11. The mood was abundantly on display at Craven cottage with a League 1 display to finish off an appalling season.
Every time I have seen EH on the tv since then he looked like a broken man. The reason for that seems to be something one of the suits said in the summer. Something about changing the recruitment model to concentrate on promising younger talent who could be brought on by good coaching.
I took that to mean no more big names....too expensive, so we'll do it on the cheap and hope we might win another cup because we have no chance in the league.
Which is where PIF come in. They have financial difficulties and this latest turn of events tells me that "the project" is now dead in the water because they don't want to spend all their money building a state of the art arena for a team of also rans.
Which brings me to the future...the club is now worth much more than they paid for it so, in these disappointing circumstances I wouldn't be surprised if the owners admitted defeat and cashed in.
Remember what you were thinking nearly 5 years ago.....Only in Newcastle
Thanks Mick. I am still feeling slightly numb, not as bad as when Keegan left, not quite fully over that one. I still haven't found the strength to read his autobiography.. However I am trying desperately to be positive. You can survive with a team full of talented kids can't you?
A well written piece that summarises the reality of where we are right now. I can't think of any good reasons why Bruno and Hall would stay at NUFC. I can't see how staying could be "sold" to them by Wilson & Hopkinson. I am pleased for Howe that he is getting out. Scapegoating him for last summer's window was disgraceful. He wasn't going to let that happen again. End of an era is right. Howe's achievements at NUFC will look even better as time goes by. Unless we get some experience through the in door in all positions this season will be a struggle.
Felt like it had been coming for a while, with the quietness all summer, Eddie's interviews showing he was out of the loop on the transfers.
The tactics, dejection and low morale from the players.
That he has looked burnt out for a while now.
Especially after he had pneumonia and came back within weeks, which to me was when i had real concern for him, since he admitted in an interview once, that he often neglected his personal life for his coaching tasks.
Which along with tales from Klopp, Pep and other managers of how they are often doing 15-18 hours at their clubs. highlights the dysfunction lying at how unhealthy the work balance is, of living in the age of social media, fans/pundits reactions all the time.
The pressures and effects these have on them, the players that is such a toxic pit, add in the corruption and commercialism of the game. And it leaves such a bitter taste in us all.
Trafford drama, over a keeper that never has felt like such an MVP to me. Of the constant glazing of English young players that means they get inflated values, shunted into the spotlight. Chewed in and out til press, fans get bored of them. Or rile them up if they colour outside of the lines in anyways.
On the new guy, seems to fit the profile, structure PIF wants, that is young manager that can come in, do what they want and keep the machine running. Ross/David, the main cogs that will be there til PIF decide they have failed or they decide to fuck off to the next project.
The work and turnaround Eddie achieved with us cannot be understated, he took us in 18 months from being relegation fighters, to qualifying for Champions League, he had money to spend true, but the way he got mileage out of Joe, Miggy, Murphy, Wilson, Willock, Burn, Trippler, Tonali, Bruno during his years.
The way he has moulded Tino, Hall, Miley, got what he got out of Chris Wood outside of Forest.
Did what Keegan, Robson and other greats didn't, won us a trophy, got us CL again and getting us to the last 16.
Mistakes have been made, last season it was clear Eddie had stalled, become stale in his use of tactics, formations, player selections outside of injuries. Looked like he had run out of answers.
That meant a number of fans felt it was time for a change, something Eddie clearly has been fighting all summer, that along with the burnout, is what seems to have led him to step down.
Timing of it all, along with Bruno drama, Keegan's death, departures and general fans frustration and anger at the stalling off the pitch on everything and silence from the club. Is feeding into the ever-present toxicity, cynicism and disillusionment of our fanbase, that has never forgotten or healed from Ashley's, Hall/Shepard shit, that always seems to find a way of affecting us, that the media and other fans eat up for their amusement.
I'm trying to stay positive, of that this coming season. New players, new manager can bring us something like Borunemouth/Sunderland had last season.
That Ross/David have some clue of what they are doing, that the money gained from the transfers is being invested right.
That we will get something on the ground/stadium at somepoint.
Even with the voice in my head saying it will end like it often has.
Because it's so tiring to be negative, to fear the worst all the time, even though we expect it because of history and the way things seem to be in football overall.
The never-ceasing complexities of being a NUFC fan, the loop we have chosen to be part of.
God, its been a bad month, what with Kevin going and now this but there seems to be a strange symmetry here with the two of them both feeling they had to leave because of the chaos above them.
We've been chucked off the Flying Scotsman and now we're back on the Big Dipper!
The reasons are many, but the whole thing went stale after the cup win. An aging lot of centre backs with zero pace who really are in trouble when they get turned, the German apart. Two full backs who I don't believe want to be here anymore & a strike force not to be feared. The new bloke will have as much to deal with as Eddie did himself when he first arrived. I'm worried but do have some faith they will sort some of the problems for opening night 🙏
Deffo seem to have a bee in your bonnet about, PIF.
Personally I’m grateful to them for taking over from Ashley and bank rolling us to a trophy, champions league again and solidifying our place in the EPL (very good chance we’d be doing an Ipswich right now if they hadn’t). Just cant please some people.
Personally I don’t think there’s anything wrong with SJP and more than happy to keep turning up there for the rest of my life (whilst able). Couldn’t fill it against Leeds on a freezing night last season and I’m pretty sure if we have a season as poor as the last one under Howe, there’d be further gaps.
Hope the new bloke comes in and we have the bottle to go to Anfield and the Etihad and give them a right fucking scare.
It’s a tough job running a football club and you can’t keep everyone happy all the time but I’m prepared to give Hopkinson and Wilson a chance and thank PIF every single day for delivering us from the absolute shit show of Ashley and his cronies. I mean Derek Llambias, ffs.
I do sometimes think that you and others would like to see PIF/Hopkinson/Wilson fail because you don’t like them. Even if that’s to the detriment of Newcastle United.
I think that you're possibly confusing a justifiable skepticism about the Saudis' ambitions and aims for the club, as well as their recent performance as owners, with an immovable dislike. There is plenty that they could have done to move the club forward - making progress on the training ground and stadium (I agree with you, I'd like to stay at SJP) - that is not constrained by financial rules, but we've seen no progress at all. The much vaunted "investment" in the city that was used to justify the club being bought by a fairly dislikable nation state has almost entirely failed to appear, and is longer a topic for discussion.
As far as I see it, the recent shift in model - to become, in essentials, Brighton on Tyne - represents an attempt to make the club self-sustaining and to ensure that it requires little input from KSA. With Hopkinson and Wilson in place, and a manager content to work within the new 'player trading' model, the aim is to keep the football side of the club "ticking along." I recall that phrase being distinctly unpopular several years ago.
Good sensible comment Mark. Thank you for posting. I like Eddie Howe but would we have been in this position if Unai Emery had taken the job as he was offered, I’m very confident for the future both on & off the pitch but hey what do I know I’ve only been a supporter for over 60 years!
I suspect there’s a variety of reasons behind Howe’s departure but I think the PSR rules must be hugely frustrating to deal with. All the media comments yesterday were that ‘you can’t keep on selling your best players’. I’d agree entirely with that but I’d be amazed if our current owners want to do that. They spent big initially & you could say that’s causing us issues now. That spending brought the success we’ve all craved & some momentum to the club’s progress. But it also took us over the spending rules & we had to sell Anderson & Minteh. Even being in the Champions League twice hasn’t helped put us in a much stronger position. Selling 3 key players at once is football suicide but seems to be required to stay on the right side of the rules. But that just means we’re going round in circles & any momentum has stalled. I’m sure the owners would like to spend more but they can’t. Being like Brighton, Brentford & Bournemouth just means you have a ceiling of achievement, get a patronising pat on the head by the top 6 clubs & then have to start again because they buy all your best players because the can offer higher wages due to years if making profits from buying success when there were no PSR rules. No wonder Howe had enough! It could be years/decades before we can spend at the higher level needed, even though we have the money now! Currently, our ‘new’ model is just the same one as under Ashley but we have far more money available that we aren’t allowed to spend! Definitely corrupt!
Agree with almost all of that except "Eddie Howe hitting the exit is a de-facto vote of no confidence in those immediately above him"
I see it more as him, wisely, looking after himself for once
As always a great piece Mick. I keep coming back to something you said in your tribute to Kevin Keegan which I think nails this whole situation. - Newcastle could be one of the biggest clubs in the country, if not Europe and the world, were it not for the fact that they are so badly run.
He built a fantastic team but wasn't allowed by the financial skullduggery of the PL to keep the best parts of it intact or add to it and make it stronger, all momentum was stripped away and lost. Once word got out that the Saudi pockets were off limits it became impossible to sell the project to the players we needed to continue. Howe never got the chance to find out what could have been acheived if real investment was allowed and he would know building from scratch again would be many more times more difficult now that the players can see little evidence of a growing club. The project is officially suspended and will remain so until someone actually gets those big infrastructure projects underway. Expectations for next season should be similar to those of the teams around us, 40 points please.
Perfectly summed up. I couldn't have put it better. Those running the club have a lot to answer for and I, for one, have had enough of the C.E.O's bull.
Agreed. And how many time have we had a ‘new’ CEO/ Director of Football who do 6 months & then clear off? They’re even less loyal than players & managers. So they’ll instigated a ‘new’ model but won’t oversee it until the end, leaving everyone else to mop it up. Happens all the time, from Dan Ashworth onwards, so don’t put any faith in our current two doing a good job. It’s true football men like Howe & the true fans who suffer. That’s modern football for you. Joy!
It’s sad we’ve just been crushed under the wheels of PSR /SCR and poor Eddie has understandably had a gutful , but we will always have the carabao and the CL trips
Well said Mick. My concern is of the timing. I can only assume there will be more moving on. Hall to Man U persists, not forgetting we thought Tino was a shoe in to go after last season, and now Big Joe supposedly wants out. Its almost as if PIF are having firesale before flogging us. More importantly our song repertoires have all gone for a Burton. Even black and white army needs blue inserting somewhere.
Spot on, Michael. We seem to have reached a critical juncture. Which direction we take from here, I’m not prepared to bet on.
Since the turn of the year, when everybody realised the summer recruitment was pants, there seems to have been a foreboding in the air about the colossal waste of money involved in that added to the fact that there was little or no back up for the first 11. The mood was abundantly on display at Craven cottage with a League 1 display to finish off an appalling season.
Every time I have seen EH on the tv since then he looked like a broken man. The reason for that seems to be something one of the suits said in the summer. Something about changing the recruitment model to concentrate on promising younger talent who could be brought on by good coaching.
I took that to mean no more big names....too expensive, so we'll do it on the cheap and hope we might win another cup because we have no chance in the league.
Which is where PIF come in. They have financial difficulties and this latest turn of events tells me that "the project" is now dead in the water because they don't want to spend all their money building a state of the art arena for a team of also rans.
Which brings me to the future...the club is now worth much more than they paid for it so, in these disappointing circumstances I wouldn't be surprised if the owners admitted defeat and cashed in.
Remember what you were thinking nearly 5 years ago.....Only in Newcastle
Thanks Mick. I am still feeling slightly numb, not as bad as when Keegan left, not quite fully over that one. I still haven't found the strength to read his autobiography.. However I am trying desperately to be positive. You can survive with a team full of talented kids can't you?
A well written piece that summarises the reality of where we are right now. I can't think of any good reasons why Bruno and Hall would stay at NUFC. I can't see how staying could be "sold" to them by Wilson & Hopkinson. I am pleased for Howe that he is getting out. Scapegoating him for last summer's window was disgraceful. He wasn't going to let that happen again. End of an era is right. Howe's achievements at NUFC will look even better as time goes by. Unless we get some experience through the in door in all positions this season will be a struggle.
Noted it yesterday on social media.
Felt like it had been coming for a while, with the quietness all summer, Eddie's interviews showing he was out of the loop on the transfers.
The tactics, dejection and low morale from the players.
That he has looked burnt out for a while now.
Especially after he had pneumonia and came back within weeks, which to me was when i had real concern for him, since he admitted in an interview once, that he often neglected his personal life for his coaching tasks.
Which along with tales from Klopp, Pep and other managers of how they are often doing 15-18 hours at their clubs. highlights the dysfunction lying at how unhealthy the work balance is, of living in the age of social media, fans/pundits reactions all the time.
The pressures and effects these have on them, the players that is such a toxic pit, add in the corruption and commercialism of the game. And it leaves such a bitter taste in us all.
Trafford drama, over a keeper that never has felt like such an MVP to me. Of the constant glazing of English young players that means they get inflated values, shunted into the spotlight. Chewed in and out til press, fans get bored of them. Or rile them up if they colour outside of the lines in anyways.
On the new guy, seems to fit the profile, structure PIF wants, that is young manager that can come in, do what they want and keep the machine running. Ross/David, the main cogs that will be there til PIF decide they have failed or they decide to fuck off to the next project.
The work and turnaround Eddie achieved with us cannot be understated, he took us in 18 months from being relegation fighters, to qualifying for Champions League, he had money to spend true, but the way he got mileage out of Joe, Miggy, Murphy, Wilson, Willock, Burn, Trippler, Tonali, Bruno during his years.
The way he has moulded Tino, Hall, Miley, got what he got out of Chris Wood outside of Forest.
Did what Keegan, Robson and other greats didn't, won us a trophy, got us CL again and getting us to the last 16.
Mistakes have been made, last season it was clear Eddie had stalled, become stale in his use of tactics, formations, player selections outside of injuries. Looked like he had run out of answers.
That meant a number of fans felt it was time for a change, something Eddie clearly has been fighting all summer, that along with the burnout, is what seems to have led him to step down.
Timing of it all, along with Bruno drama, Keegan's death, departures and general fans frustration and anger at the stalling off the pitch on everything and silence from the club. Is feeding into the ever-present toxicity, cynicism and disillusionment of our fanbase, that has never forgotten or healed from Ashley's, Hall/Shepard shit, that always seems to find a way of affecting us, that the media and other fans eat up for their amusement.
I'm trying to stay positive, of that this coming season. New players, new manager can bring us something like Borunemouth/Sunderland had last season.
That Ross/David have some clue of what they are doing, that the money gained from the transfers is being invested right.
That we will get something on the ground/stadium at somepoint.
Even with the voice in my head saying it will end like it often has.
Because it's so tiring to be negative, to fear the worst all the time, even though we expect it because of history and the way things seem to be in football overall.
The never-ceasing complexities of being a NUFC fan, the loop we have chosen to be part of.
With you all the way on this.
God, its been a bad month, what with Kevin going and now this but there seems to be a strange symmetry here with the two of them both feeling they had to leave because of the chaos above them.
We've been chucked off the Flying Scotsman and now we're back on the Big Dipper!
Brilliant sober analysis. Well done Mick.
The reasons are many, but the whole thing went stale after the cup win. An aging lot of centre backs with zero pace who really are in trouble when they get turned, the German apart. Two full backs who I don't believe want to be here anymore & a strike force not to be feared. The new bloke will have as much to deal with as Eddie did himself when he first arrived. I'm worried but do have some faith they will sort some of the problems for opening night 🙏
Excellent Mick
Deffo seem to have a bee in your bonnet about, PIF.
Personally I’m grateful to them for taking over from Ashley and bank rolling us to a trophy, champions league again and solidifying our place in the EPL (very good chance we’d be doing an Ipswich right now if they hadn’t). Just cant please some people.
Personally I don’t think there’s anything wrong with SJP and more than happy to keep turning up there for the rest of my life (whilst able). Couldn’t fill it against Leeds on a freezing night last season and I’m pretty sure if we have a season as poor as the last one under Howe, there’d be further gaps.
Hope the new bloke comes in and we have the bottle to go to Anfield and the Etihad and give them a right fucking scare.
It’s a tough job running a football club and you can’t keep everyone happy all the time but I’m prepared to give Hopkinson and Wilson a chance and thank PIF every single day for delivering us from the absolute shit show of Ashley and his cronies. I mean Derek Llambias, ffs.
I do sometimes think that you and others would like to see PIF/Hopkinson/Wilson fail because you don’t like them. Even if that’s to the detriment of Newcastle United.
I think that you're possibly confusing a justifiable skepticism about the Saudis' ambitions and aims for the club, as well as their recent performance as owners, with an immovable dislike. There is plenty that they could have done to move the club forward - making progress on the training ground and stadium (I agree with you, I'd like to stay at SJP) - that is not constrained by financial rules, but we've seen no progress at all. The much vaunted "investment" in the city that was used to justify the club being bought by a fairly dislikable nation state has almost entirely failed to appear, and is longer a topic for discussion.
As far as I see it, the recent shift in model - to become, in essentials, Brighton on Tyne - represents an attempt to make the club self-sustaining and to ensure that it requires little input from KSA. With Hopkinson and Wilson in place, and a manager content to work within the new 'player trading' model, the aim is to keep the football side of the club "ticking along." I recall that phrase being distinctly unpopular several years ago.
Good sensible comment Mark. Thank you for posting. I like Eddie Howe but would we have been in this position if Unai Emery had taken the job as he was offered, I’m very confident for the future both on & off the pitch but hey what do I know I’ve only been a supporter for over 60 years!