Howe: 'We're where we need to be at the moment. But you can't relax for a second' | OneFootball

Howe is 47 now and three decades into a life in football. His third full season in charge of Newcastle United ends this weekend. It has been the best of them. They have won a trophy, enjoyed all that ending that long, long wait for silverware entailed and now a win over Everton on Sunday would secure Champions League qualification for the second time under his watch. Howe, a studious young player before management hooked him, remembers staying up late as a seven-year-old to watch the conclusion of the epic Steve Davis-Dennis Taylor 1985 World Championship final. Distractions for him are fewer now.

"I think when you're doing the job I do you're very tunnel-visioned, you're very focused on what you have to do. Sometimes it can be a real strength, but also it can be a weakness," he explains. "I sometimes have a word with myself if I feel like I'm too much one way. I'll try and do something. That might just be walking the dog for 20 minutes. It might be something as simple as that, just to get a different perspective."

It is an interesting insight from a notoriously work-orientated coach. We are not long past the days of his lengthy working hours being speculated upon. But recently he spoke of the need for players to have balanced lives. "If you're too focused overly in one area, I think that can be negative," he says. "You have the ability to think about different things that take you away from football. Thinking about football 24/7 is… as much as I'd say I want the players focused, I think sometimes that can be too much. Whether that's spending time with your family, whether that's a hobby - whatever it is, I think having something to escape to is really beneficial.

"My family is probably the biggest escape. When you have children - I'm lucky enough to have three boys - they take you to a different place, and there's no choice on that. Immediately when you come home and you're seeing them, they're in their own worlds, whether that's school or play, and I think that's really healthy for me that I have them. They're not asking me how my day was, they're not asking me about results, or the players, or the pressures of the job, which is great. At their young age, they're very innocent, and I think that's definitely helped."

It is an all-consuming profession but Howe was jolted last month by his admittance to hospital with pneumonia. "I'm feeling stronger every day," he says, but those few weeks were tough for him and those close to him. Is he a good patient? "I wouldn't say I am. When you're used to being very active - not only physically, but mentally… this job brings so many unique challenges that I think when you're suddenly forced into a position where you're not acting in that way, it takes some time to adjust.

"I’m quite impatient, quite demanding of myself. I was desperate to get back to work. Thankfully, I am."

There was a deluge of well-wishes for Howe during that concerning period. On a recent return to the Royal Victoria Infirmary where he was treated, he looked on the verge of being overwhelmed by the strength of feeling towards him and the care he had been afforded. He saw the outpouring following March's Carabao Cup win and knows, too, what effect the shaking intensity of St. James' Park on its best days, like during the win over Chelsea earlier in May, can have.

"It is a very emotional football club, but it's all for the betterment of the football club, because I think the passion and the feeling is what drives us to do our best every day," he says. "I think the supporters help us give more. That emotion, when it's positive - there's nothing better.

"But I think the players know that they have to use the emotion, but also control it. Control of those emotions is absolutely key, whether that's preparing for a game, delivering a gameplan, or even afterwards - you still have to keep an element of control. There's always another game, there's always another season. The challenge to get better and to improve never stops."

Last season, in these pages, Howe spoke of the need to "keep evolving". He says there is room for "a nod to the past" in the way he prepares his team, or the way they train, "but the game changes so quickly. This is something we've noticed in our time at Newcastle. If you rewind to when we first came here and you look at the Premier League and the games and you go forward to where we are now, the game is almost unrecognisable. Again, in three to four years, we'll be saying the same thing again." There’s a latent risk of being left behind. "And you do, very quickly. Evolving is key for us," he nods. "We're where we need to be at the moment. But you can't relax for a second in this league."

The manner of that evolution is crucial to him. Howe says he feels a responsibility to produce teams that represent the city in a way that doesn't take a torch to the club's values. "I think it's important. I think that's set by the culture - the culture of how we act around ourselves every day, the culture of how we treat each other at the training ground, the culture of how the players interact with the staff. I think that naturally then drips into a matchday.

"We have a huge responsibility to the young supporters of Newcastle to represent ourselves and the club in the right way, so if they are looking at us and copying us - which I know my sons do - they're copying the right things and good habits. I do think we have a duty to do that."

It is difficult, in this whistle-stop overview of a landmark campaign, to put the Magpies' achievements of 2024/25 into any kind of wider context when its conclusion is still unknown. A lot of the intricacies of the last ten months can slip the memory and it is why Howe keeps notes and a diary, so he can "truly get a proper reflection of where we were at that moment. It hasn't all been plain sailing this season - it's been a tough year, and we've come through some real challenges, which pleases me no end. It gives you more satisfaction at the end when you know you've done it honestly and you've just given your best. I'd like to say on behalf of me and my staff I think we've done that, and the players in return have done that as well. I'm very proud of everybody."

How far ahead do you look? "I don't think I go too far. The transfer window's always important, whichever one's coming up, because you're always planning for that. Apart from that I'll have ideas of where I want to take the team, what direction and style I want to go to, but that will be a process. I know we'll get to that point. I've got sort of a framework of ideas. But other that that, you're very much day-to-day because I think if you go too far from what's happening in the here and now in this job, it gets difficult.

"Enjoyment is difficult for any manager. But I'd love to think at the end of the season we'll sit back and enjoy hopefully what we've achieved, whatever that is, because I think we can know with reassurance that we've given our best."

It is thought by some, perhaps more prevalently outside of Newcastle, that the best way to win here is to ride on the emotion of the place and the club at its heart. Howe has harnessed that intense feeling and used it to fuel a new era. It still gets him sometimes. After lifting the Carabao Cup, he went to face the media in a quieter part of Wembley.

He had kept a lid on it until then ("I think you have to - you still have interviews to do, you have a role to play and a job to do") but as he sat down to answer some more questions, he spoke about how in the midst of the celebrations he had thought about not just those closest to him but some who weren't there to see it, like his mum, Anne, who passed away in 2012. Thousands of Newcastle fans knew exactly what he was talking about; they were thinking about people they missed that day too.

"It was very emotional across the whole day. You never quite know what the result's going to be so you're in a heightened emotional state anyway. Then of course things fall positively for you, the way the team played that day was brilliant, and then you see the reaction of all the supporters in the stadium, so then you're taking all that in.

"But just for me, I went to certain people in my life that have been key figures, have helped me on my path. I was just very grateful in that moment, and hoping that they could hear my words to them, really," he adds. "Something like that."