Eddie Howe eased pressure surrounding his future with a crucial away win at Tottenhamplaceholder image
Eddie Howe eased pressure surrounding his future with a crucial away win at Tottenham | AFP via Getty Images
Eddie Howe’s position has come under a lot of scrutiny by fans - but he’s proven in the past he can be the man to take the club forward.
Newcastle United boss Eddie Howe has admitted that he would leave his position at St James’ Park if he no longer felt he was the man to take the club forward.
It was perhaps the first time in his managerial career that the man, who is renowned for his cool and calm demeanour in the press room, showed that he was struggling to contain his emotions. The interview came following a defeat to Brentford the previous weekend where he admitted in a candid interview that he wasn’t doing his job ‘well enough at the moment’ and that he needed to ‘do better’.
What’s gone wrong for Newcastle United this season?
Howe, for the first time since joining Newcastle, is under real pressure from some sections of the fanbase. There’s a genuine divide amongst the fanbase between whether he’s the man to lead the club forward in the next step of the adventure or whether Howe’s powers have gone stale and if it’s time for a new voice.
These criticisms are understandable. Newcastle after their win at Tottenham are still only 10th in the table, they are eight points away from the top five positions with 12 games to spare and four away from the top seven.
They were beaten in the Wear-Tyne derby without barely laying a glove on Sunderland at the Stadium of Light - and are yet to beat any of the top seven sides in the division this term. They’ve often saved their best performances for Europe and have both struggled to score enough goals on a regular basis in the league - scoring 37 - and are also letting in too many, having already conceded the same number.
The Magpies have allowed a total of 19 points to slip from winning positions - the most in the Premier League - and they’ve also had issues getting back into games after conceding the first goal.
Many of these issues were similar early part of last season too before a staggering upturn in form in December 2024 after a 3-1 loss to Brentford, triggered a nine-match winning run as 2025 marked the club’s best season in a century and their first domestic trophy in 70 years.
But there hasn’t been anything resembling that type of run this season. The club’s still struggling to implement their energetic high-pressing system on a regular basis in the same way as years gone by , and they’ve lacked a consistent goalscorer with Yoane Wissa scoring just once in the league - and Nick Woltemade failing to score in 12 matches across all competitions after looking like a real talent in the early months.
Newcastle’s 2025 summer recruitment has not gone to plan with the exception of Malick Thiaw, with Anthony Elanga and Jacob Ramsey also not quite reaching expectations - although it’s worth noting that the latter two both had their best games to date in the recent 2-1 win over Tottenham.
Why Howe is still the man to take Newcastle United forward
Howe is experiencing a blip, which is something that almost any manager in the Premier League can have when they're at the same club for four and a half years, like he’s been at Newcastle.
However, for the time being, the positives Howe possesses far outweigh the negatives and give him enough credit in the bank to try and weather the storm until the end of the season at the very least.
Howe arrived at Newcastle in November 2021, inheriting a team that’s a shadow of what it is now, having just come through 17 years of Mike Ashley ownership and a dismal end to the Steve Bruce era. The team hadn’t won in 10 matches, they were bottom of the table and they were five points from safety. They ended that season in 12th position after a series of sensational signings in the shape of Dan Burn, Kieran Trippier and arguably the best addition in recent history Bruno Guimaraes among others.
The following season, after Isak’s arrival, he catapulted the club into fourth position - reaching a League Cup final along the way and transforming Newcastle from the worst defensive team of 2021 into the joint best defence in the league conceding just 33 league goals all season - the best in the club’s entire history. Injuries marred the next campaign, but entertainment was still at a real high as the club scored 85 league goals, the most ever in a Premier League campaign for Newcastle.
Meanwhile, in his third and best full season to date, he lifted the Carabao Cup by outclassing the soon-to-be crowned league champions Liverpool in the final while spearheading the club into the Champions League group stage for just the third time this century.
This season has been hard due to unmitigated circumstances such as Alexander Isak forcing his way out of the club, sporting director Paul Mitchell’s decision to leave before the window got going, and an avalanche of injuries. But even so, Newcastle are one win away from potentially reaching the Champions League knockout stage for the first time in the club’s history, with Qarabag on the horizon. And they aren’t entirely out of the race for Europe, with seventh potentially still marking a respectable league campaign.
In each season so far Howe’s broken some kind of big record and if he’s given time then there’s a high chance he could achieve even more with the North East heavyweights.
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