Forced to sell players, Amanda Staveley, World’s richest club – Eddie Howe opens up | OneFootball

Eddie Howe talking in depth about his life and career.

The Newcastle United Head Coach interviewed by Simon Jordan.

A great interview, really insightful into Eddie Howe, as a manager and as a person.

It just sums up to me, yet again, how lucky we are as Newcastle United fans, to have Eddie Howe as our leader at the club.

Eddie Howe talking on William Hill’s Up Front with Simon Jordan:

“It’s getting more and more difficult for a club like Newcastle to break into the big six.

“I’m a believer that anything is possible and Leicester proved that if you get everything right, in a one-off season you can do unbelievable things.

“I believe we could do that if we got everything right.

“But could we do that consistently under the current rules? Probably not.

“I don’t agree with the new rules.

“I felt really uncomfortable in the summer when we were forced to sell two talented young players in Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh.

“It was against our will really, for financial reasons.

“Elliot was an academy product who we’d invested in since he joined the club as a young lad, which makes you think, ‘why are we doing this?’ It doesn’t feel right.

“I understand the rules to a degree, but how it’s fundamentally working at the moment, is not right.

The buying and selling of players has always been a good thing for the game. It brings intrigue and so much more to the game, but now we’re almost going against that. Trading was down this summer more than it has been for a long time which isn’t healthy for the game. I think PSR was brought in to do one thing, but it’s turned into something totally different.”

Eddie Howe on the Amanda Staveley comments and ambition:

“The vision is absolutely to win major trophies at Newcastle.

“That’s been made clear not just by Amanda Staveley, but by several other people at board level.

“There are big long-term ambitions and I think they understand now, with the rules that are in place, that they really are long-term rather than short-term.

“Her [Amanda Staveley] comments about wanting to win all these trophies obviously increases the pressure on me.

“Whenever those comments are made there is part of me that thinks to a degree, ‘I wish you hadn’t done that’.

“But that’s just Amanda, she’s so passionate. I can’t tell you how good she is for the football club and she’s so caring about the people at the club. I never think, ‘you shouldn’t have said that.”

Eddie Howe on the ‘World’s richest club’…

“The fact that we’re the world’s richest club is something that has never been talked about internally.

“The conversation has never been, ‘right, we’re the world’s richest club, how much money are we going to spend?’

“We want to build Newcastle step-by-step; we want to do things in the right way, and we want to make good decisions for the club in both the short and long-term.

“There isn’t an endless pot of money.

“We have to make very good decisions when it comes to recruitment and we want to invest in the academy.

“The decision-making from the leaders of the football club has been brilliant.

“The media have created the narrative around us being the richest club and that we’re going to go out and buy Lionel Messi. The reality has been so far from that.”

Eddie Howe on the immediate potential relegation situation he faced:

“The remit from early from the club was stay in the Premier League, that was a very clear objective.

“It was going to be tough. That was the focus, with the future long-term goals established if that was achieved. I knew if I wasn’t successful with that, there wouldn’t be another year for me at the club.

“I went through the interview process in which I explained my vision and my methods, they were set out from early. They clearly liked what they heard as I ended up getting the job, but it wasn’t the place to talk about the long-term vision when the main priority was to stay in the Premier League.

“The early discussions with Amanda Staveley, Mehrdad Ghodoussi and the PIF were all about the short-term, it was November, and we had the January transfer window coming up. It was a case of looking at the current squad, assessing areas that needed improving and who can improve those areas, to get out of the bottom three. That was it.

“Of course, we knew if we could execute that plan correctly then we could look towards the future more, but the short-term plan was of paramount importance at the time.”

An excellent interview this, well worth watching the whole thing, as Eddie Howe talks to Simon Jordan about all aspects of his life in football, especially at Newcastle United.