Wayne Rooney has been talking about Eddie Howe and Newcastle United.
This follows the FA Cup exit to Manchester City on Saturday night.
Which of course was only 72 hours after that thrilling 2-1 victory for a 10 men United team against Man U, Wayne Rooney’s former club.
These two matches encapsulating the ups and downs of this Newcastle United season, one which has been blighted by so many days lost to injury, more than any other Premier League club.
Never so many matches either, with Eddie Howe and his team having played more matches this season so far, than any other club in the top five European leagues.
Wayne Rooney has very strong opinions on the situation at St James’ Park: “I think Newcastle have got a great manager in Eddie Howe…he has really impressed with everything he does and they just have to build slowly over the next few years.”
This has proved a tough season with the most demanding fixture schedule in the club’s history, then so many injuries impacting on top of that.
At times this season so frustrating for Newcastle United fans and of course nobody more frustrated than Eddie Howe, as juggling so many matches has proved so difficult (impossible?).
Saturday night a prime case in point, Pep Guardiola able to make ten changes to refresh and the depth of his available squad allowing such a quality team to still go out on the pitch, whilst Eddie Howe having no other option but to leave some key players out who couldn’t start due to their physical condition that would have invited unacceptable risk of serious injury. However, the United boss having no option but to start other players he would have chosen to give a shift off to in other circumstances, yet again, due to no viable replacements.
Speaking on his own podcast (The Wayne Rooney Show), the former Man U player declaring: “For the [Newcastle United] fans I’m sure they want obviously to taste a[nother] trophy, but they’ll have to just try to be patient with it, and they will be frustrated at times because they won’t be challenging for titles or whatever. But I think they can get there gradually over the next five or so years [with Eddie Howe].”
Yet another huge match of course coming up on Tuesday night, once again only three days in between games. Eddie Howe and Newcastle United taking on Barcelona in the fight for a place in the Champions League quarter-finals.
A match that is absolute proof of how much Eddie Howe has transformed our team’s fortunes.
What a success story it will be if now the Newcastle United boss and his team can take us past Barcelona.