Sacking Eddie Howe – If that’s the answer then you’re asking the wrong question | OneFootball

I month ago I wrote along similar lines about Eddie Howe.

That was after the 3-2 defeat at Chelsea 29 days ago.

The previous game had seen a comfortable 3-0 win over Wolves but this was just a temporary respite.

Neither did the fact that Newcastle United had only lost one (and won five) of their last eight games, before the match at Stamford Bridge, apparently count for anything either.

It always feels now that for a vocal minority of Newcastle United fans, that Eddie Howe is only one defeat and/or perceived poor performance away from calls for him to be sacked.

Sacking Eddie Howe? If that’s the answer, then you are asking the wrong question.

Well, obviously I don’t have the levels of ‘expertise’ of those telling the Newcastle United Head Coach where he is ‘obviously’ getting things so unnecessarily wrong.

As I said after that defeat at Chelsea four weeks ago…

‘The experts sitting in their bedrooms spouting out all their knowledge of varying formations Eddie Howe should have ‘obviously’ used, well, it doesn’t matter what set-up or formation you put out, if when the entire side you put out prove incapable of keeping the ball for more than two or three passes and continually gift possession, to a similarly generous and poor on the night Chelsea side, does it?

Do you honestly think the overriding factor in Monday night’s defeat was the way Eddie Howe set up his team? If you honestly do so then there is little hope for you.’

The thing is as well, that Chelsea defeat was of course then followed by the FA Cup loss at Man City. Despite everybody predicting this as an all but foregone conclusion, that second loss inside a week just sent the NUFC fan critics onto another level. If only Eddie Howe had done this instead etc etc.

This wasn’t a new thing of course, despite the incredible job the NUFC Head Coach has done since arriving in November 2021 and turning around an absolute shambles that he inherited from Steve Bruce and Mike Ashley.

A year earlier (March 2023), Eddie Howe was under considerable pressure from the NUFC fan critics and unscrupulous journalists and pundits.

This came after Eddie Howe had overseen three defeats in a row (0-2 Liverpool at home, 0-2 Man U at Wembley, 0-2 at Man City) and also only one win in eight Premier League matches (five draws and two defeats).

Then on 12 March 2023, Newcastle played Wolves at home and beat them 2-1, this beginning a sequence of nine PL matches where NUFC won eight of them and it effectively sealed fourth place and Champions League football.

No doubt many of you are saying, why are you coming out with this now? Eddie Howe has just overseen seven points from three games and the overwhelming opinion, amongst Newcastle United fans and outsiders, is that with NUFC set to move into sixth if winning against Spurs in the early Saturday kick-off, then that proves just how good a job Eddie Howe has done in the circumstances. Those circumstances of course mainly revolving around the ridiculous number of missing players who have been out for for long this season.

However…

The truth is that this past week has simply summed up how shallow so many people are, which I can excuse our enemies in the media for, I expect nothing else.

However, with this vocal minority of Newcastle United fans I’m not so forgiving.

Their loyalty and support to Eddie Howe and indeed his players, is so wafer thin.

Put it this way, if Harvey Barnes hadn’t done what he did against West Ham with those two late goals and of Fulham had scored when dominant in the first half, then we could well have been looking at a past week where United had only picked up one point and not three. That would have seen now NUFC in 12th, only above a 13th placed Bournemouth on goal difference.

The fact that Eddie Howe has had six months of dealing with an unprecedented number of missing players wouldn’t matter to his NUFC fan critics who are so quick to turn.

It wouldn’t matter that these three games in a week had seen such massive further bad luck when it came to injuries to players and the Head Coach dealing with an entire team (or more!) of unavailable players.

Nor of course would it matter that things beyond Eddie Howe’s control such what players do in matches once they get on the pitch, decisions by match officials, so many fine margins…

I think Eddie Howe has done a brilliant job in such desperate difficult circumstances this season and losing to both West Ham and Fulham wouldn’t have changed that opinion in any way.

Yet so many of this vocal minority would have gone ballistic if only one point this past week.

Eddie Howe has so much credit in the bank, at least for me he has, we have seen what an astonishing job he has done.

Indeed, despite already hit by so many missing players for a couple of months, Eddie Howe still had us fifth in early December and only a few points off top four, until the Nick Pope injury really tipped us over the edge. At that point as well we were in the League Cup quarters and just one win away from the Champions League last 16.