When the Newcastle United friendly at Bristol City was announced, I couldn’t believe my luck.
They are the closest half decent team to me, living down in the South West and I knew it would be easy enough to get tickets in the home end.
I quickly snapped up seats for me and two of my sons, as close to the away end as physically possible. My preference was to sit with the Newcastle United fans, and I did log on when they went on sale to members, but they were already sold out.
Last year I was successful in precisely one ballot so, despite the uncompetitive nature of the game, I was eager to see the lads live.
We headed to Ashton Gate wearing nothing identifying us as Newcastle United fans. I had rung in advance to ask if we could wear Newcastle shirts. It’s a friendly after all. I didn’t think it would be a big deal. The lady told me she couldn’t guarantee we’d get in if wearing away attire.
I noticed some Newcastle fans at the turnstile. One had either ingeniously or idiotically worn the maroon and blue throwback shirt inside out. Whether it was by design or accident, he got into the stands. There were quite a few Newcastle shirts in our stand so I’m guessing the lady I spoke to was just overly cautious.
The game wasn’t great, but I can tell you the scoreline was deceptive. We practically camped in their half. Bristol City scored with nearly every attack they had whilst we lacked cutting edge and forced a few excellent saves from their keeper. Botman probably had the worst game of his career, culpable for two of their goals before slicing in an own goal to seal his awful evening.
I was glad to be so close to the Newcastle fans and sang along with the choruses of ‘one Kevin Keegan’. I could tell from their conversations that the people in front and behind us were Newcastle fans too. The away end was only about three quarters full. Not sure how it had supposedly sold out as there were loads of gaps in the stand. As the first half wore on, we saw groups of fans, usually with one or more members wearing a Newcastle garment, getting ushered down to the front where they were allowed through a gate to join the away support.
At half time I asked a steward if we could do the same. She went through the theatrics of saying that we shouldn’t have bought home tickets if we weren’t home fans. I pointed at my 12 and 10 year old and explained that this was a rare chance to see their team, was it really so dastardly of us to attend? Besides, from what I’d witnessed in our section there were as many local Newcastle fans here as actual Bristol City ones and the stadium still wasn’t sold out, so we’d done them a massive favour turning up en masse. The lady took us down to the front but then another grumpy jobsworth intervened and started berating us for buying tickets in the home end.
‘Women’s football mixed, rugby mixed. Men’s football, never mixed,’ she lectured.
I briefly argued that it’s different for friendlies and I’d been to plenty of international ones where home and away fans mixed without incident.
Having been twice chastised, we were finally led through to the away end and could enjoy the second half with our own people. I use the word ‘enjoy’ loosely as we obviously got a walloping on paper and plenty of Bristol City fans were giving it the big one towards us after the game. You’d think they’d just knocked us out the FA Cup.
As we exited the stadium, we saw the team bus and there was a collection of Newcastle fans gathered outside the players’ entrance. My boys asked me if they could wait to see the players come out and I agreed. They don’t ever get the chance to do something like that.
It was a long wait. You’d think with it being a friendly the players and staff would pretty much shower and evacuate but some of the players took up to an hour to come out. They came in ones and twos from about fifteen minutes after we’d got there until the last couple came out a full hour after we’d begun waiting. Big shout out to Lewis Hall, Alex Murphy and Anthony Elanga who all did the rounds signing various things and getting into selfies. My 12 year old got a selfie with Alex Murphy and now claims he’s his favourite player. Some of the players waved and/or smiled. Some just got straight on the coach without a flicker of acknowledgement.
When Eddie Howe walked past a few of us chanted his name and he gave a smile and brief wave before getting on the bus. I play back that smile in my head and in hindsight it appeared strained but maybe I’m just repainting it with the knowledge of what has since passed. I was probably no more than ten feet away from our gaffer. The closest proximity I’ve ever been to him. I could have never predicted what would follow.
When I turned on Sky Sports News as I made my breakfast on Thursday morning, the presenter said that they had huge breaking news. I somehow knew it was regarding us, although my suspicion was that an offer had been accepted for Bruno. The presenter then went on to explain this would be massive for Newcastle fans. Just as I thought.
When he explained Eddie Howe had left his role I was dumfounded…
Thursday became a day of barely working whilst following the unrelenting coverage on the topic. This had been in the pipeline for weeks. A new boss was already lined up. The updates just kept rolling through.
It’s been a tough couple of weeks as Newcastle United fans. We said goodbye permanently to one of our biggest legends in Kevin Keegan and now a manager has resigned who had achieved our greatest accomplishment of the modern era.
Photo by The Mag
There’s an incredible symmetry to it all. Keegan’s first game in charge was a 3-0 victory over Bristol City at home whilst the curtain came down for Eddie in a 4-1 loss away to the same team.
Despite being so different in their personalities in terms of Keegan’s all out passion and emotion and Eddie’s calm demeanour, I think the two shared many similarities. They both wanted to play fast paced attacking football. I know we didn’t see as much of it at times last season but Newcastle at its best under Howe were a thriving, tireless beast that didn’t give teams a second to settle. ‘Get Into Them’ was the battle cry and it was reminiscent of the early to mid 90s rampant marauders that Keegan managed.
The two men also share the traits of being humble, loyal and honourable. Eddie Howe is exhausted. I think he’s seen how this summer’s gone, probably thinks/knows that Bruno is likely to go next and is looking at the size of the job and just doesn’t feel like he has the energy for the rebuild.
I’m gutted as I felt he is precisely the man to tackle the task and I was actually optimistic coming into the new season. Sure, we’d lost Gordon and Tonali, but we’d got excellent money for two players who hadn’t been at their best for a season (or more in Gordon’s case).
I still felt quietly confident we’d convince Bruno to give us one more year. With him leading the youngsters, I thought we could be re-energised and might be something of a surprise package.
But Eddie was honest and he clearly felt he either wasn’t the best man for the job or that he simply didn’t have the energy for it. We know he’s a workaholic, we know he had health issues last season. Maybe the guy just needs a break. Instead of hanging on and not giving it his all and maybe hoping for a sacking and a mega payout, he left his role with his dignity fully intact. Just as our man Keegan did.
A Mackem friend messaged me saying he thinks the last 12 months for us has been one of the worst for a club that he can remember. I quickly reminded him of back-to-back bottom place finishes for his team. Think that may have been a slightly worse year.
But it has been a tough old time for us. From losing our star striker at the end of last summer, to having our worst league campaign under Eddie and then steadily losing half the team that are in that Carabao Cup trophy lift photo. It has been a monumental shift and there is a huge reassembly required.
A quick note on Bruno Guimaraes. I do think he’s going to end up at Arsenal but if I was the Newcastle board I would now be telling them they can’t have him. We had the mess with Liverpool all last summer, with them not making any real bids until the very end of the transfer window. Isak’s shameful actions didn’t help the situation, and I’m hopeful Bruno won’t replicate those.
However, our other two big sales have been done quickly and efficiently. Tottenham messed about with a silly low initial offer but quickly resolved the situation. You can’t blame a team for trying to get a player for cheaper than they think they eventually will. We’ve done it often enough. But when the selling club makes clear the expectation around price, the buyer needs to pay up or shut up. We should set out our stall now. We’re into the last month of the transfer window, Arsenal have been courting Bruno for more than a month before putting in any actual bid. We should say that Bruno is indispensable and that we now don’t have sufficient time to replace him with what’s out there on the market.
We would send a clear message. You want to deal with us? Fine, get in dialogue with us and meet our asking price quickly. If you don’t, we won’t sell. Simple as that. Treat us with respect and we will reciprocate. If we leave this to the last week or day of the transfer window again it just sends the message to other teams and our players that we’ll tolerate being messed about like this. The next few weeks will tell us if we’ve learned anything from last summer.
Back to Eddie Howe.
He will stand up there with the greats for me. He’s taken us to more cup finals than any other single manager has since Joe Harvey and he took us to more Carabao Cup finals and semi finals than every other Newcastle manager in history combined! He won our first trophy in generations. So many Newcastle fans have been born and passed on without seeing their team enjoy that glory but Eddie achieved it for those of us lucky enough to be around to see it.
Since Eddie Howe took over the club, with us in 19th place and winless at the time, only four teams have accumulated more Premier League points than Newcastle. Considering the way we have been largely hamstrung financially that is a tremendous accomplishment in itself.
Having learned more about this new manager, Matthias Jaissle, I think he could be a tremendous acquisition.
He’s done a lot in a young career already, albeit it at a lower standard. It sounds like he enjoys attacking, direct football and he worked with an extremely young squad at Salzburg and had them winning leagues and getting further in the Champions League than they ever had. There weren’t many good options on the market. If we’d wanted a short term fix that would be an easy sell to the fanbase, then Rafa Benitez for a year or two may have been a shout. He’s made some poor club choices in recent seasons but I think he could have done a job for us in the short term. Jose Mourinho could have finally had his chance at St James’ had he not signed for a second (likely thankless) spell at Real Madrid.
However, I think Matthias Jaissle may turn out to be something of a masterstroke. I just hope we don’t see a repeat of what happened the last time one of our legendary English managers left their role in the Premier League era.
Like Keegan and Robson, Howe took a club that was on its knees and helped it stand amongst the best in the division. He brought us our first trophy, achieving the one thing that neither Keegan nor Robson could.
I imagine at some point in his future he’ll do something those other greats did and manage our country. I look forward to being able to cheer a team led by him again. Thank you for everything Eddie. You’ve been magnificent.
You can follow the author on Twitter @billymerlin