by How bad is it in Newcastle? Well, they are now below Manchester United in the table, which leaves doubt and uncertainty at Old Trafford, which cannot be a good sign. They have lost eight of their last 12 games, crashing out of the Champions League and Carabao Cup. There was a big drop in applause after Tuesday’s 3-1 home win against Nottingham Forest, a team that had won just one away game all season. It’s not a full blown crisis yet but there is certainly a potential crisis in the air.
The next three games feel key. In the league, Newcastle will face Liverpool and Manchester City at home, two games that would be scary even if they were in form. And between those games, on the first Saturday of the year, they travel to Sunderland in the FA Cup. The FA Cup would pose a dilemma for Newcastle anyway; The league and getting back to Champions League qualification is of course the priority but the Cup is their only chance of a trophy this season, their only chance to end their drought a trophy dating back to 1969.
But much more importantly, it’s against Sunderland, their local rivals, who they haven’t played since 2016 and haven’t won since 2011. It’s a terrible game for them. If they win, even if they win fairly comfortably, that’s simply what they should do; Sunderland are a team in the Championship and they have not inflated millions of Arabs. But if Newcastle lose, it will be a derby that will reverberate for generations. It is probably the biggest Tyne-Wear derby since the Division Two play-off semi-final in 1990 – and yet for Newcastle there is little that could go wrong with it.
None of that is Eddie Howe’s fault. But it could be a game that haunts him. Apart from the consequences of a possible victory, he cannot afford to field a weakened team. All decisions will be scrutinized. Ruud Gullit’s time as Newcastle manager came to an end after “the Derby in the Rain” in which he left out Alan Shearer and Duncan Ferguson (although it was after Ferguson came off the bench that Sunderland equalized and it wasn’t until Shearer came on that .they scored a winner). These are games where everything is inflated and exaggerated and therefore have their own logical appeal.
And Howe probably wants to play nothing more than a string of reserves. His team looks exhausted. Although their injury crisis is easing, they are left with seven players, including Sandro Tonali suspended after breaching gambling regulations. Poor Kieran Trippier, the captain, who has been consistently excellent for a year or so, has slumped into a run of bad form that has cost goals against Everton, Tottenham and Chelsea in the Carabao Cup. But he is only the one who made the most significant errors; there is a fall out all over the park.
For the first time since his appointment in November 2021, Howe is starting to ask questions. He remains popular with Newcastle fans, largely because after years under Steve Bruce he has a sense of purpose. Although considerable money has been spent since the Arabian took over, he has players who were already at the club performing at a level they never seemed capable of.
Neutrals in football may not always be very happy but Newcastle fans had years of entertainment in the mid-90s and they didn’t win anything. Embracing the darker arts Howe seems to have learned while studying Diego Simeone at Atlético, which added a cutting edge to the style he practiced as Bournemouth manager, part of the embrace of the dark side of being great success, which has come since then. Saudi takeover. The feeling of being under siege has helped make St James’s Park one of the most passionate/hostile (destroy by attitude) situations in the country.
And that perhaps explains why the home form has remained good this season, even as the away form has been. Newcastle couldn’t manage to lose 1-0 against City in their first away game of the season and they didn’t really get it. Their only league win this season was against Sheffield United (albeit 8-0). Even in November, when they lost at Bournemouth there was a strong exchange between disgruntled away fans and Trippier. The pattern against Forest was similar: Newcastle, or at least a tired Newcastle, struggling to deal with pace in wide areas and, when the energy of their press drops, they lack creativity through the middle.
There is still no fan pressure on Howe, and so far the Saudi Arabian owners have been extremely sensible and conservative in their decision-making. But the history of the rich owners suggests that if the next three games go badly, they will be asking whether Howe is really the manager to turn their investment into trophies.
