It is a prospect that feels a long way away after Sunday's 5-1 defeat against Spurs, but it was only a couple of months ago that Bruno Guimaraes vowed that Newcastle United were 'going to be a big power in world football' at his unveiling. The club's owners did not disguise the fact that Newcastle's immediate priority was to stay up, but they also made it clear to the Brazil international that the Magpies' long-term goal was to qualify for the Champions League and to one day win it.
Others will join Bruno, Kieran Trippier et al in sharing that dream this summer and Newcastle have been fishing in a very different pond since the takeover last October. So much so, even Villarreal boss Unai Emery was tempted to swap life in the Champions League for an immediate relegation battle last November.
Emery's name was right at the top of the list of the dozens of managers the hierarchy and their advisers analysed during a thorough search across the globe after Steve Bruce was sacked last October and it was easy to see why. Emery has won 11 trophies to date, including the Europa League on four occasions, and the Spaniard previously managed in the Premier League with Arsenal.
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Confidence was high that Newcastle were close to pulling off a coup when news of the Magpies' approach leaked on the day Villarreal were playing a crucial Champions League group game against Young Boys. Emery, unnerved, backed away.
In an interview with the Athletic on Tuesday, Emery acknowledged that Newcastle was 'an attractive project' in being 'just about building, from the ground up' but the 50-year-old wanted to stay at Villarreal out of respect to his employers. It appeared to be the first real setback for the club's new owners at the time.
All the while, Eddie Howe was monitoring developments after making it to the final shootout with Emery for the position. Indeed, Howe, himself, admitted that he was 'reading stuff in the media to see where things were going to go'.
Emery's trophy-laden CV made him the initial first choice of some members of the consortium, but part-owner Mehrdad Ghodoussi previously revealed that 'the chairman [Yasir Al-Rumayyan] wanted Eddie from day one'. It is easy to say that now but Howe had made his name at Bournemouth as a club builder and, as well as impressing in his Zoom interview, the 44-year-old came out on top in the data and analytical tests the owners carried out.
Perhaps, most importantly, the hierarchy were conscious of appointing a manager who was not afraid of relegation. That did not mean turning to a traditional firefighter like Sam Allardyce or Roy Hodgson, but someone who had previously been down there at the bottom.
Part-owner Amanda Staveley actually discussed this with Howe the night they watched Newcastle play at Brighton last November ahead of his appointment formally being announced a few days later. Newcastle may have been 19th at the time, but Howe was going back into a position he sat in before. Aside from Jamie Reuben, the owners were all new to football and they needed that experience.
Howe has been backed accordingly ever since. As well as assistant Jason Tindall and first-team coaches Simon Weatherstone and Stephen Purches following Howe to Tyneside, sports scientist Dan Hodges also started on his first day despite Newcastle only appointing a head of sports science in Callum Walsh, who has since left the club, a few months previously. Andy Howe has also since come in as head of first-team technical scouting from Bournemouth while Mark Leyland arrived as a coach analyst from Liverpool.
When it came to the owners' first challenging window in charge, last January, Howe's clear thinking, desire for Premier League experience and character driven approach underpinned the work of the club's transfer committee last January at a time when the hierarchy were being offered players from all over the world. All of these mid-season arrivals went on to play their part in Newcastle's best run of form since the Magpies qualified for Europe in 2012.
While results have tailed off in recent weeks, in a strange way, Sunday's hammering at Spurs was a reminder of how far Newcastle have come under Howe. Such have been Newcastle's high standards of late, it came as a shock.
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