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Saturday, October 12, 2024

Eddie Howe, Paul Mitchell and the ‘elephant in the room’ at Newcastle

Newcastle United could be top of the Premier League on Saturday night, a jarring proposition given how much of 2024 has been fought on the back foot.

The ripples of a summer reset at St James’ Park continue to be felt behind the scenes while performances – to put it generously – have not matched the excellent return of 10 points from a possible 12 this season.

Still, a winnable trip to Fulham – even with Alexander Isak rated doubtful with a toe injury – offers the chance to ascend the summit of the Premier League for the first time since 2002 and set a milestone of sorts.

“It’s early days,” Eddie Howe said on Friday. And he is right: Newcastle’s form is fragile and performances have been sketchy. Key players like Bruno Guimaraes, Joelinton and Anthony Gordon are far away from their best and Fulham will draw hope from the lack of fluency on show in wins against Wolves and Tottenham Hotspur.

It has been a case of character over conviction for Newcastle so far and there is something to be said for the spirit that has dragged them over the line in their four games this season. One Newcastle insider noted this week that they would have probably lost two of the four games they have been unbeaten in this season, citing the spirit and “know how” of an established group as a real strength.

“I’m not saying we’ve played poorly – we haven’t – it is just that we have been inconsistent within games,” Howe said.

“We’ve dug in really well in difficult moments, we’ve hung in there and taken our chances when they’ve come.”

With no midweek game, midfield discipline and shape have been worked on at the training ground with a sense that a big performance is “coming”.

Howe believes his team is “hopefully very close” to clicking and is contemplating changes, with Kieran Trippier set for a recall and Sandro Tonali pushing for a first league start of the season.

The bigger picture, of course, remains the elephant in the room. A recalibration of the club’s structure in the summer has brought tension, with the relationship between Howe and director of football Paul Mitchell off to a rocky start.

i understands there have been some reassurances in recent days around the terms of engagement on recruitment moving forward. Howe also retains the total support of everyone at the club. But the lack of communication between the pair is unusual.

Howe opted for diplomacy on Friday, refusing to be drawn when i asked if he had spoken to Mitchell this week. If he hasn’t, that makes it more than a fortnight since they last spoke, and since then Mitchell has delivered a forthright, 90-minute state of the union interview in the Newcastle boardroom.

“Just so people know, I’ve had conversations with senior members of the board this week,” Howe said.

“So I’m in regular communication with them, trying to collaborate and work together for the benefit of the club. That’s always in my heart and that will always be while I’m manager of the club.”

Part of what is being constructed in the background is what sources call a “professional, robust” structure that they believe will future-proof the club’s progress.

Whether it was Mitchell in the driving seat or not, it is a journey that majority owners the Public Investment Fund (PIF) were determined to take in the close season. The vision – “the big idea”, one source told i – is something all of those at the top of the club believe in and CEO Darren Eales has been tasked with delivering.

Mitchell has walked into it with a directness that has taken a lot of people by surprise – and created tension with Howe – but those who know him best aren’t surprised.

“He’s a typical Mancunian in a way,” one former colleague told i this week.

“He could have been a bit more collegiate but he’s done what he needed to do: realign people’s expectations. Now he’s got to deliver.”

With the January transfer window still a long way off, one of his next priorities is to deliver progress on contract renewals. There have been initial conversations with Gordon’s camp about improving and extending his contract, as i reported earlier this month, and Howe confirmed for the first time on Friday the club want to do the same for Isak too.

But it is Sean Longstaff whose situation is more pressing, with a contract that expires in the summer. Howe, who is a huge fan of the academy graduate but pointedly said he wasn’t involved in negotiations, argued it was in the club’s best interests to resolve the situation.

“Losing players to free transfers is not something we want to be fighting as a football club for many different reasons,” he said.

“Probably the biggest reason for that is that it’s a distraction for the players I don’t think in my experience players tend to play well when they start to run their contract down into that last year, it’s a very uncertain time for them.

“We want players at their best but we want to protect the asset value of the individual player as well. To replace any player that is in and around our squad is going to cost us a lot of money so we’ve got to be very careful with those decisions.”

There is even less certainty about Callum Wilson, whose deal was extended for another year last season. Howe had vouched for Wilson in that process but his injury problems – a hamstring issue related to an initial back complaint is now set to rule him out until the October international break at the earliest – mean tough decisions lie ahead.

Perhaps it is Mitchell’s job to make those hard calls, applying brutal logic where before there was a measure of sentiment and loyalty to players who had delivered. That might make him unpopular but if the decisions are right, Newcastle could prosper in the long run.

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