Eddie and Paul are at war. Eddie may leave for England. But hold on a minute, Paul is close to walking out. No, scrub that, seems like they’ve called a truce and it will be all smiles at Wolves on Sunday.
Events at Newcastle have been nothing if not confusing lately but the latest twist, a rapprochement between the manager, Eddie Howe, and the sporting director, Paul Mitchell, appears genuine. For the moment at least everyone is on their best behaviour and fathoming out the best way of signing Marc Guéhi from Crystal Palace in January.
Mitchell’s failure to buy the England centre-half became a running sore, scarring his first transfer window at St James’ Park. As Steve Parish, the Palace chairman, increasingly played hardball, Mitchell’s camp sniped that Howe’s intransigence dictated other feasible targets were overlooked but the manager’s entourage suggested the polar opposite.
When the window closed Newcastle’s only outfield signings were the defender Lloyd Kelly, a free transfer from Bournemouth, and William Osula, a raw “project” forward bought for £10m from Sheffield United. Howe ended up with five goalkeepers but Greece’s Odysseas Vlachodimos is yet to feature in a matchday squad and seems an unwanted acquisition from Nottingham Forest in late June.
Mitchell had not arrived when Newcastle’s board scrambled to raise the £60m needed to remain on the right side of profitability and sustainability regulations and avoid a potential points deduction, as Vlachodimos proved the makeweight in the £30m deal that took Elliot Anderson to Forest.
In the immediate aftermath of a bruising June, Newcastle’s former co-owners Amanda Staveley and her husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, departed abruptly. Suggestions that Darren Eales, the chief executive, informed the majority Saudi Arabian owners there were too many decision-makers on Tyneside have not been denied but, whatever the truth, Howe lost two key allies.
With the manager learning of Mitchell’s appointment less than 48 hours before his installation and Eales having indicated that Howe should concentrate on coaching “on the grass”, Gareth Southgate’s resignation as England manager looked timely.
Howe likes to restrict his interaction with the media to formally staged press conferences and unlike several Newcastle predecessors, most notably Rafael Benítez, who regularly warned journalists that “all football is a lie”, never offers off-the-record briefings.
Yet in July north-east reporters were invited to the pre-season training camp in southern Germany where the manager expressed deep concern about new “relationships” and the prospect of Mitchell and Newcastle’s new performance director cum injury prevention specialist, James Bunce, intruding on his extensive spheres of autonomy.
It made for some explosive headlines but Howe, despite keeping his options open by leaving the door open to an approach from the Football Association, signalled his preference was to remain on Tyneside.
Given that the 46-year-old is an intensely private personality who does not bestow trust lightly, he probably knows he could struggle with some of the more public demands of the England job. Moreover, despite the summer’s failure to sign a high-calibre centre-half and right-winger, the spine of Newcastle’s first XI remains very strong. Most Premier League managers can only dream of a first-choice midfield of Sandro Tonali, Bruno Guimarães and Joelinton, complemented by Alexander Isak at centre-forward.
Nonetheless, much as Lee Carsley is in a probationary period to assess whether he should have the interim aspect of his England manager’s title removed, Howe was clearly placing his relationships with Mitchell and Bunce on trial. What the Saudis made of his outburst remains unknown but, given that every decision at Newcastle has to be approved in Riyadh, it is clear they were not prepared to pay £70m on Guéhi to pacify the manager.
Fast forward to early September and Newcastle’s failure to spend much over the summer almost certainly prefaced Mitchell calling a partly off-record, 90-minute press briefing. Hats off to him for stepping out of the shadows and engaging with the media in a manner common in his previous job at Monaco, but this is rare amid the opaque world of English football.
Perhaps Mitchell had been instructed to speak out by Newcastle’s chairman, Yasir al-Rumayyan, and the rest of the Saudi delegation who attended the arguably fortunate 2-1 home win against Tottenham.
If Rumayyan and co resembled Ofsted inspectors summoned to make an urgent check on school discipline, Mitchell’s desire for openness led the sporting director to contradict himself in the course of an extraordinary afternoon in the windowless surrounds of St James’ Park’s Sir Bobby Robson suite.
At one point his suggestion that he “wasn’t scared” of the FA attempting to poach Howe made it seem as if he might be keen to offload a perhaps high-maintenance manager, but it is understood Mitchell did not mean it that way. Most of his conversation centred on an evident determination to build a relationship with a manager he was “over-communicating” with in hour-long nightly phone calls as, despite inevitable creative tensions, the pair strove to bond.
Less positively, Mitchell’s claim that it is still “early days” between them hardly seemed indicative of a natural connection, let alone positive chemistry. Meanwhile Howe’s previous insistence that he was no longer fully au fait with transfer activity appeared downright puzzling.
Mitchell is believed not to have intended any implicit criticism of his predecessor, Dan Ashworth, when he suggested Newcastle had overpaid for players since the takeover and needed to be better at selling senior professionals while widening their recruitment net.
Considering Ashworth bought Yankuba Minteh for £6m last summer and the winger more than quintupled in value when sold to Brighton for £33m in June that seems harsh. Similarly Staveley and co should surely be applauded for securing the signatures of Guimarães and Sven Botman for about £35m apiece.
Howe, though, was possibly more concerned by the deconstruction of a recruitment department in which his nephew Andy Howe plays a key role. Not to mention Bunce’s supervision of training sessions perhaps emphasising a slight philosophical clash in the way he and Mitchell envisage the team playing as they attempt to avoid injuries responsible for derailing last season’s ambitions of European qualification.
Perhaps significantly, Newcastle head to Wolves with seven points from three games but also have the Premier League’s lowest pass completion and poorest passing accuracy statistics.
A manager who enjoyed considerable autonomy in his previous job at Bournemouth will surely have bristled when Mitchell said his head coach was sufficiently smart “to evolve” but, for now, the truce holds and Howe is expected to preach unity at his press conference on Friday.
Despite Carsley’s strong start in the England manager’s tracksuit FA executives will doubtless be watching, and waiting.
