“Can I swear?,” inquires Sean Longstaff. The Newcastle midfielder has turned the clock back to 2020 and is searching for the right word to emphasise just how badly his career was unravelling at the time. “In training I was a bit of a tit,” he eventually explains. “I wasn’t nice to be around. I was miserable.”
Today Longstaff is a mainstay of Eddie Howe’s midfield, eagerly looking forward to Sunday’s Carabao Cup final against Manchester United at Wembley. Two and a half years ago, though, a difficult relationship with Newcastle’s former manager Steve Bruce and a slow recovery from an ACL tear had clouded everything.
Eventually a concerned, and perceptive, senior teammate intervened. “Matty Ritchie pulled us aside and said ‘Longy, you need to sort it out,’” says the 25-year-old. “Some people just let you drift away but he was the one who pulled me back.”
Things came to a head when Longstaff burst into floods of tears in front of his father, David, after breakfast one morning. As a former Great Britain ice hockey player, now coaching Tyneside’s Whitley Warriors, David realised his son needed specialist support and, happily, Ritchie knew precisely the right psychologist to deliver it.
“After I’d broken down in front of my old man, Matty texted us and said you need to speak to this guy and you need to speak to him now,” he recalls. “If it wasn’t for him getting us on the right track I probably wouldn’t be playing here now. I’m really, really grateful.”
If part of the problem was Longstaff’s relationship with Bruce, the pressure of being a suddenly out-of-form local hero in a relegation struggle had also become too much for the boyhood Newcastle fan from North Shields.
“When you’re not winning, this club can be a tough place,” he says. “I think it’s tougher for local players. When you’re good, the fans think you’re Maradona and probably better than you are. Then, when you aren’t doing so well, you get more stick than maybe some of the others because the fans relate to you more. People think you’ve got the best job in the world but sometimes it can seem the toughest.
“But I’m out on the other side now, I’ve got a lot more perspective and there’s no other place I’d rather play football. I’m a lot happier, I’m smiling a lot more and enjoying playing. It’s not a grind to come in to training every day. I now know it’s just about trying to sort out the mind and keeping everything nice and calm.”
As he sits chatting in an indoor practice barn at Newcastle’s suburban training ground, Longstaff speaks warmly about both Howe and Rafael Benítez, the manager who gave him his debut. Tellingly, a midfielder whose form under Benítez attracted a £20m bid from Manchester United before that serious knee injury struck, never mentions Bruce by name.
“I try not to look back on that time,” he says. “I was a young lad, I hadn’t played that many first team games, I’d just done my knee and I was trying to come back. When Rafa was in I felt calm and comfortable but then I was trying to race back to fitness and impress a new manager. If you’re not fully fit you don’t do yourself justice.”
By the time Howe was installed by the club’s new, wealthy, Saudi Arabian-led, owners in November 2021 Longstaff’s knee had fully healed but the attendant mental scars still required repair. “From the first day with the new manager everything was different for me,” explains a player whose younger brother and fellow Newcastle midfielder, Matty, is sidelined by an ACL rupture. “He [Howe] improves you as a player and as a person and he really does care about you.
“He’s someone I’ll be forever grateful to. He’s saved my Newcastle career. We have a really good relationship. I trust him and I hope he’s starting to trust me more and more.
“Under Rafa I played well but since the new manager came in I’m living the dream. I’ve got a chance to play for Newcastle in a cup final. That’s what I’ve dreamed of since I was a little kid and now, hopefully, it’s going to happen.”
Longstaff played a big part in getting Newcastle to Wembley, not least by scoring two second-leg goals in the semi-final against Southampton. “It was a major high,” he says. “My family stuck by me when it wasn’t going so well and they were so proud.
“Driving in [to St James’ Park] that night was a different feeling. I locked eyes with Burny [Dan Burn, the Northumberland-born Newcastle defender] and I thought we were going to shed a little tear together, to be honest.
“It was such a special night and to score two goals is a memory for a lifetime. Burny grabbed me both times and said how proud he was of me. It meant the world.”
Now Longstaff hopes to help end Newcastle’s 54-year trophy drought. “People here still love Bob Moncur [Newcastle’s 1969 Fairs Cup-winning captain] so bringing the trophy back with us would be really special,” he says. “With the new owners this club’s going to win leagues and cups but I don’t think people thought this team would be the one to win the first trophy after the takeover. That’s really driving us on.”
