Would you rather Eddie Howe or Alexander Isak had left Newcastle United? | OneFootball

Eddie Howe or Alexander Isak?

That’s a best of a daft question.

Yes, it is, isn’t it.

Maybe though, Eddie Howe or Alexander Isak wasn’t such a daft question, not all that long ago. At least for some Newcastle United fans anyway.

Every so often, I (as Editor of The Mag) send out a set of questions to some of the regular and not so regular contributors to The Mag.

At least a few times a year this happens. usually at least once in the summer, often during the interminable international breaks as well. This serves a number of purposes, such as getting a snapshot of opinion from a number of Newcastle United fans on various short-term and not so short-term issues, as well as helping to get bonus articles on The Mag when there are no matches, introducing discussion points that hopefully people will have plenty to say on.

As it happens, we are now into the first international break of this season and whilst I don’t think we will have any shortage of things to talk about in the next week and a half, there are of course any number of questions I think I could ask this time, that are guaranteed to get plenty of strong views in response.

I am guessing that anybody reading this will be thinking, if I included the following question this time, it would be the most pointless exercise ever – ‘Would you rather Eddie Howe or Alexander Isak had left Newcastle United?’

I think everybody would be amazed if any contributor to The Mag, is now replying Eddie Howe to that question, with Alexander Isak the one they’d have preferred to keep.

The thing is though, this wasn’t always the case.

In the past, I think it was summer 2024, I included this very question when asking contributors to The Mag what they thought. It was phrased slightly differently but essentially the same question. From memory I think I asked; ‘If you could only pick one of the two to still be at Newcastle United when the 2024/25 season kicks off, would you rather keep Eddie Howe or Alexander Isak?’

I remember plenty writers complained this was such an unfair question, an impossible one. Which was of course the whole point of asking it, a difficult choice, as of course pretty much every Newcastle United fan would have been desperate to keep both Eddie Howe and Alexander Isak back in summer 2024.

My memory tells me that as the replies to the sets of questions came in, it was a mixed response, roughly a two to one ratio. Around two thirds of fans/writers saying that keeping Eddie Howe was more important, a third going for Alexander Isak.

I knew what I thought about it but you just never know for sure what other Newcastle United will think.

I didn’t have any doubts in summer 2024, nor in summer 2025, indeed, I would have given the same answer at any point across these past three years.

Eddie Howe has performed miracles at St James’ Park every season he has been here so far and I have no doubt will do so once again this 2025/26 season.

Match after match he puts a team on the pitch that proves far better than its individual parts AND Eddie Howe has improved pretty much every single player, whether inherited or signed by him.

That of course includes Alexander Isak. A promising young striker who hadn’t succeeded in the Bundesliga but had done well overall in La Liga, though had scored only six goals in the 2021/22 Spanish league season immediately before Eddie Howe committed a record NUFC £63m transfer fee of the club’s money (Alexander Isak scoring nine in the 2019/20 La Liga season, 17 in the 2020/21 campaign).

Without Eddie Howe, would Alexander Isak have achieved as much as he has these past three years, would he have developed into the most sought after striker in the Premier League, the whole of Europe, effectively the whole world? Would he have gone from scoring six goals in La Liga to then make 78 Premier League starts and score 54PL goals,, to then become the player to attract easily the biggest transfer fee ever paid out by a Premier League club?

Maybe not.

If not signing Alexander Isak, would Eddie Howe have overseen such incredible progress and success these past three seasons?

Very likely.

This is the thing, football is a team game.

No single player is more important than the team.

No player is ever as important as the manager.

Not if you have got a good manager anyway, or even more so when you have an outstanding one such as Eddie Howe.

The manager is key to success, or failure. He is the Architect, he is the Project Manager, he is the one with the overall vision, the man with the plan.

Players are of course important, essential in fact. However, they are like craftsmen, no matter how good they are, they are not indispensable. They are following the plan laid down to them by their boss, if working within a team of craftsmen any individual only has a certain amount of importance. After all, if you are working on a massive project, you can’t just be relying on one key craftsmen. What happens if he gets ill, picks up an injury, finds another employer who he finds more attractive, that will pay bigger wages. If you have a large team of craftsmen on any big job, it is just a fact of life that the team will change over time.

I am not all that bothered really about Alexander Isak. It has been annoying and a distraction in the short-term BUT he is just one player who no longer wanted to play for us.

Talking about illness and injury, I was far more worried when Eddie Howe was seriously ill earlier this year than when any player gets injured. I was concerned for Eddie Howe as a person because I think he is a great bloke, though I have never met him personally, whilst also selfishly concerned for him because he is the manager, the architect, of all that is good at Newcastle United at the present time and over the past three and a half years or more.

Eddie Howe should be cherished by all Newcastle United fans, we are so lucky to have him.

Eddie Howe should be supported in the good and not so good times on the pitch. Indeed, he should be supported even more so when luck and results are not going our way.

Eddie Howe is rivalling Kevin Keegan as the greatest manager in my lifetime of supporting Newcastle United, that is how good he is, how brilliantly he has managed our club.

One day of course he will no longer be Newcastle United manager, so it is all the more reason to fully appreciate every day that Eddie Howe is here.

As for Alexander Isak. He was a very good player for Newcastle United, part of an excellent team that achieved against the odds due to Eddie Howe’s brilliance as a manager. He (Isak) has now decided he no longer wants to be a Newcastle United player but there are plenty of others who do, both existing NUFC players and those who want to join them, a half dozen who have done so just these past two months.

Eddie Howe and this Newcastle United team now move on, to bigger and better things we all hope.