It is Catch 22 for Eddie Howe | OneFootball

It is now over 38 months in the job for Eddie Howe.

November 2021 saw the former Bournemouth boss appointed by Newcastle United.

A lot had happened since Eddie Howe arrived, inheriting a totally demoralised not high quality squad, that looked absolutely destined for relegation.

There have been ups and downs since he arrived at St James’ Park, however, far far more ups than downs.

Only the most deluded observer would claim Eddie Howe has been anything other than a spectacular success with Newcastle United.

Especially when things haven’t quite worked out off the pitch as was universally expected.

A new ownership spending undreamt of fortunes on stellar signings was widely reported.

The reality not quite matching that.

Indeed, we are now coming to the end of a third transfer window in a row, where it looks like no new faces will be arriving to compete for the first eleven. The only new faces since summer 2023 have been the odd squad player (Kelly, Osula and the Forest PSR double deal signing of Vlachodimos (and Anderson going to Forest)).

Of course, to add to the PSR negatives, Eddie Howe was forced to accept the loss of two of his most exciting young attacking players, Minteh and Anderson now starring for Forest and Brighton.

Anyway, this brings me to our very most recent match.

Which ironically/coincidentally, was against Eddie’s old club, Bournemouth.

As we all know, after a run of nine wins in a row, this ended in defeat at St James’ Park.

To me, it was a real Catch 22 moment for Eddie Howe.

Eddie Howe kept the exact same eleven players in the team who had won 3-0 against Wolves on the Wednesday.

I don’t think there was any way that Eddie Howe ideally wanted this to be the case, but as I say, it was a Catch 22 moment in my opinion.

As always, I think a whole lot of people, especially Newcastle United fans, mistakenly think that our bench players are a lot better than the reality.

I think we have decent subs as things stand, who can say beat Bromley and should do same against Birmingham hopefully. However, they are generally nowhere near level of our first choice.

Eddie Howe may have though with hindsight, that even though our current subs aren’t generally that high a level, he could/should have still started a few of them last Saturday. Especially with only 63 hours between the Wolves match ending and the Bournemouth one kicking off.

Again though, a real Catch 22 moment, especially in the key midfield and attacking areas.

Eddie Howe said after the 4-1 defeat that his immediate thought was that ‘fatigue’ had been a major factor.

My automatic thought, which I still hold today, is that he wasn’t talking about a type of just physical ‘fatigue’ in terms of players unable to run around. To me he was obviously meaning a type of ‘fatigue’ where physically and mentally they were just not at their best, it affecting their touch and speed of thought in those crucial split seconds. Small margins can make huge differences.

Imagine though if say Eddie Howe had replaced Isak, Bruno and Gordon,, with Osula, Longstaff and Almiron???

The very same people going so over the top after losing one game after nine wins would have been going off it at the sight of Isak, Bruno and Gordon sitting on the bench.

Last Saturday also reminded us that our full backs are still very inexperienced and will have games like this Bournemouth one at times. Especially up against real quality players such as Semenyo in a team that was flying, now 11 games unbeaten and playing really well, Bournemouth now only three points off top four.

Maybe Eddie Howe should have played Trippier, Willock and Longstaff, possibly even Targett should have been considered. Then brought the usual first choice players on from the bench for the final half hour to win the game/see out the win.

That is of course all hypothetical and I think whichever team Eddie Howe had put out on Saturday, Newcastle would probably have still lost, in the circumstances.

Joe Willock is capable of coming in and performing very well, we saw that in a little run of games in late October/early November, the wins against Chelsea, Arsenal and Forest. However, with injury issues and not getting runs of starts, he has become a player who currently you don’t know what you will get. Once again, like other subs available at the moment, he can come on and do a job to help see out a win, however, we haven’t really seen him come on off the bench and help turn around a bad situation recently.

Last weekend actually showed a very good comparison.

With a far bigger stronger squad, Liverpool struggling to win at Brentford BUT able to bring on five strong subs, similar quality to the starting eleven, eventually winning with two added time goals from £85m sub Darwin Nunez. A sub who cost £22m more than our record signing, twice as much at least as all our other players apart from Sandro Tonali.

That is the Newcastle United reality!

We have some very very good players but beyond that?

Eddie Howe can put out, generally, a very good first team. Though even that is reliant on certain not great quality players playing at their very best every team, in order to be good enough, Jacob Murphy the most obvious.

Building a squad is going to take Eddie Howe and Newcastle United far longer.

I think the only two attacking options that Eddie Howe has who are of something like similar quality to the first eleven, are Harvey Barnes and Callum Wilson. They could well have started if Eddie Howe had been able to have those options.

At the very least they could have arrived off the bench at 2-1 down and potentially made that difference against Bournemouth.

As I say, Eddie Howe was in a real Catch 22 position last weekend and if any Newcastle United fan honestly thinks he was to blame for that defeat to Bournemouth, then you are very mistaken. In my opinion.