Dan Burn says the players are desperate to bring the club's wait for a trophy to an end
And that is that.
After what may come to be seen as a season-defining 1-0 win at West Ham on Monday, Newcastle United will roll the shutters down until the end of the week in preparation for a shot at glory and ending that 70-year wait for silverware in the Carabao Cup final against Liverpool this weekend.
In a bid to make this week feel like business-as-usual they have pushed back a mandatory pre-final press conference until Friday, with the intention of making it as “low-key” as possible.
Rights holder media duties were done and dusted last week while players have noticeably stepped back from syrupy talk of what all of this means to friends and families.
Even the ticket sales process has been simplified for them so as to cut out the stress of being continually harangued for spare seats for Sunday.
The message here? Remove the sense of the occasion. It is just another game.
As a city and supporter base simmer – with an outdoor meet of tens of thousands of travelling fans planned for Covent Garden on Saturday night – there is a marked difference in the way Newcastle are preparing for their Wembley date with Liverpool from their approach two years ago when they played Manchester United.
Back then media were invited into the club’s indoor training barn, desks were set up and players shuffled between media, broadcast and local press to speak. It was fun, a sort of mini-NFL Super Bowl arrangement, but added to the sense that this was something a bit bigger than your usual weekend.
Go back and watch the Amazon documentary of the season and you witness then co-owner Amanda Staveley embrace the emotion of it all, taking a trip through the city to look at window displays.
Sweet letters from family members of the players that documented their pride at what they might achieve were sourced and published 24 hours before the final.
Players are put through their paces in training (Photo: Getty)
The ownership group snuck out of their hotel to take smartphone snaps of the mass gathering of Newcastle fans drinking in Trafalgar Square.
Was it all a bit too much? That appears to be the conclusion of Eddie Howe and this version of the Magpies, who completed the first assignment of Wembley week on Monday with a hard-fought win in east London.
It was a victory as important as any in the Premier League this season, coming on the back of a sapping defeat to Brighton and a week of bad news on the injury front.
As staccato as the performance was – with little of the fluency that was shown when they defeated Arsenal over two legs to reach the final – it was massive in the context of Newcastle’s ongoing tilt for the Champions League. And it also showed that there is mental fortitude to this group which is going to be crucial on Sunday.
Howe rarely talks about it but he is big on the mental side of the game. He taps into the psyche of his players and holds regular, bracingly honest one-on-one feedback sessions with them in which they are encouraged to be self critical.
Those meetings have – insiders say – been pivotal to Howe managing to turn around a couple of sizeable dips in form this season.
Then there is also Dr Ian Mitchell, the club’s well-respected head of psychology, who arrived in 2023 and is an important behind-the-scenes figure who feeds into Howe’s work. It is inconceivable that he hasn’t had some input in how Newcastle can vault the mental hurdles that tripped them up last time.
No-one is better qualified to talk about the pressure the city feels than Dan Burn, a lifelong Newcastle fan playing with distinction for his hometown club.
A former season ticket-holder, he has – in the past – told his teammates they would be “immortal” in Newcastle if they were the group that finally won something.
He senses a different feeling this time around.
“We’re full of confidence going into the final and I don’t think it will be the same as last time,” Burn says.
“It was very emotional two years ago, not just for the players but also for the whole city.
“It might have been a bit more of a surprise that we got there, whereas this time around, I feel as though we believe that we should be doing that on a regular basis.
“It’ll be much more ‘business-as-usual’ from our side. I know there’ll be a lot of external noise, but internally, we’re just treating it like any other game.
“It’s not a novelty this time. I think, last time, there was maybe a bit of that. I think it came as more of a surprise two years ago. It’s not something that, as a club, we really expected.
“But since we’ve done that once, it’s now something that we feel as if we should be doing regularly.”
Eddie Howe is big on the mental side of the game (Photo: Getty)
Burn was speaking at last weekend’s North East Football Writers Awards, just after a loss to Brighton that winded the squad.
It created a sense of foreboding about facing Liverpool, surely the best team in the Premier League and arguably Europe too, but in Alexander Isak, Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro Tonali they have players who – on their day – can match anyone.
If they can recapture some form and confidence, catch a few breaks and master the mental side of it, it is not inconceivable that they could overturn the odds and end that long wait for a trophy.
“The team that finally gets it over the line will become absolute legends, and rightly so,” Burn says. He looks around the dressing room now and sees players at the top of their game.
“I feel as though, now, we have a squad where we should be doing this regularly.
“It would be a real shame and a massive disappointment if this group of lads couldn’t be the ones that finally ended it.”