Eddie Howe has become all too familiar with being second-guessed. Newcastle’s manager is currently struggling to shrug off the Amazon camera crew tailing him at almost every turn as it makes the latest instalment of its “All or Nothing” fly-on-the-wall football documentary series.
It is not something Howe particularly wanted to participate in but the club’s Saudi Arabian majority owners were keen for Newcastle to follow in the footsteps of Manchester City, Arsenal and Tottenham in offering a new audience a window into their world.
Whether it will be opened wide enough to include any revealing insights into the hitherto secretive Saudi-based upper echelons of the club hierarchy remains to be seen but Howe’s attempt to disrupt the Premier League’s established top order promises to prove compelling viewing.
“Privacy is important; when you’re dealing with players, there are certain things that should never escape the walls of the training ground,” said a manager endeavouring to keep the cameras away from his family home. “It’s delicate but I can’t go against the club. I’ll always support them in whatever venture they’re trying to pursue. Just so long as it doesn’t overstep the mark!”
Perhaps he and Pep Guardiola can discuss the art of training-ground counter-surveillance when Newcastle travel to Manchester City on Saturday hoping to reassert their challenge for Champions League qualification.
City’s Abu Dhabi-based ownership model provides something of a template, although by the time, in 2017-18, Amazon started following Guardiola and his players City were on course to win the Premier League and League Cup.
Only last Sunday Newcastle reached the final of the latter competition, losing 2-0 to Manchester United. Shortly after, in a national radio interview, the club’s UK-based director and minority shareholder Amanda Staveley vowed that the team would recover to win the Champions League, Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup. Fortunately for Howe’s equilibrium, no timelines were offered.
“I love Amanda’s positivity,” he said, somewhat carefully, on Friday, shortly before his team flew to Manchester seeking a first win in five league games. “I love her outlook. I’ve got no issue with it. All I’d say is that, if we set targets that are maybe too short term, that can have a negative effect and build external pressure the players don’t need.”
An excellent start has Newcastle fifth but Howe is entering a new, potentially high-risk, phase of his tenure. After rescuing the team from relegation last season and reaching that long-awaited Wembley final, his challenge is to transpose the owners’ £250m investment in players into European qualification.
“The next leap forward is harder,” said a manager who has arguably overachieved. “Time is a very small commodity in my shoes. The speed with which the team has improved has been so quick people assume it’s simply going to continue but it’s not that easy. To keep moving on an upward trajectory gets harder and harder. Getting better gets harder the higher you go. We have big challenges ahead and we’re going to have to be smart. My work will be judged on our evolution.
“I probably felt a bit of closure after Sunday’s final. The end of phase one is perhaps a nice way of putting it. Now we’re going to have to expand and improve the squad – you need investment to really compete at elite level – but I need to improve the players I have here too.”
Individual contributions are being minutely examined and Ryan Fraser has been found wanting, with the former Scotland winger banished to train with the Under-21s for, in Howe’s words, “the benefit of the group”.
Newcastle’s main stakeholders, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, came under a different sort of scrutiny this week. When a legal brief filed in a United States court case involving the PGA Tour and the rival, PIF-backed LIV Golf described the Newcastle chairman and PIF governor Yasir al-Rumayyan as “a sitting minister of the Saudi government”, the club’s rivals sensed blood.
Given that, in 2021, the Premier League chief executive, Richard Masters, said his organisation had received “legally binding assurances” that the “Saudi state would not control Newcastle” it prompted questions as to whether Masters should execute a threat to remove the current owners if contradictory evidence emerged.
In reality, the Premier League has always known Rumayyan is a member of the national Saudi administration – publicly available PIF law documents clearly state that its governor has to be a government minister – and Masters was, nonetheless, convinced there is no direct state involvement in the stewardship of Newcastle.
Regardless of the moral rights and wrongs of a takeover executed against a geopolitical backdrop involving considerable realpolitik, those easily accessible PIF documents make the rump of top-tier clubs up in arms about perceived Saudi duplicity appear disingenuous and opportunistic.
Yet if Tottenham and co fear feeling the squeeze from a seriously wealthy north-eastern power base, Newcastle’s manager is grappling with the more immediate problem of preventing this season from unravelling.
With his influential centre-forward Callum Wilson out of form and the squad stretched, a top-four finish could prove elusive. Howe though is acutely aware that the Saudis crave a happy ending.
