Eddie Howe seemed oblivious to the train hurtling down the track towards him. As Newcastle’s manager urged a team by now studded with substitutes to keep attacking, Enzo Le Fée came on for Sunderland and immediately slipped Brian Brobbey a sachet of energy gel.
Eighty-five minutes had passed on Sunday afternoon, the score at St James’ Park was 1-1 and Régis Le Bris had made his first change to a severely injury-hit visiting starting XI. As the clock hit the 90-minute mark, Le Fée surged into space and checked before threading a low, angled cross through the legs of Lewis Hall and Dan Burn and on to Brobbey’s feet. Although Aaron Ramsdale blocked the former Ajax striker’s initial effort, Brobbey scored at the second attempt. Newcastle had been mugged by a double nutmeg and Howe’s season appeared thoroughly derailed.
All the indications are that their manager now has seven Premier League games to reassure the club’s UK-based hierarchy and, most importantly, its majority Saudi Arabian ownership that he should remain at the helm next season. If so, there are strong suggestions he may be asked to work with a new first-team coach.
No one doubts that a 48-year-old who was jeered by his own fans as Sunderland supporters chanted “sacked in the morning” after Sunday’s final whistle is facing the biggest crisis of his four-and-a-half-year Tyneside tenure. Whatever happens between now and late May, Howe’s often poor in-game management will come under scrutiny during the forensic “performance review” the Saudis have now scheduled for this summer.
Those conducting it may ask Newcastle’s manager if, instead of relying on increasingly chaotic attacking for a late winner, he should have settled for a point against Sunderland and ordered the sort of tactical retreat capable of thwarting Le Fée and Brobbey. Howe has devoted recent seasons to breathing new life into Newcastle and it is only 12 months since he choreographed a Wembley Carabao Cup triumph but, just lately, sensible pragmatism has become a rarely used part of his vocabulary.
The shambolic second half at Camp Nou last Wednesday as Newcastle surrendered 7-2 (8-3 on aggregate) to Barcelona in the Champions League last 16 confirmed that a team that have kept only five clean sheets in their past 36 games can no longer defend reliably. If it does not help that Howe has oscillated between Ramsdale and Nick Pope in goal all season his team’s exhausting, high-energy style perhaps explains why Newcastle so often burn out in the second half of matches they initially dominate.
If a worrying lack of composure in possession from a side now beaten twice by promoted Sunderland this season is another key topic for that end of season review, Howe’s choice of the England winger Anthony Gordon as his first-choice centre-forward is another. Why, it will surely be asked, is Newcastle’s record £69m signing, the Germany striker Nick Woltemade, either left on the bench or deployed in midfield these days?
Julian Nagelsmann, Germany’s manager admits “this situation bothers me” before adding: “What I can promise is that Nick will not be 80 metres away from the goal when he plays for me. Thirty metres from goal he’s dangerous and does a lot of things well.”
Despite scoring 10 goals for Howe as a No 9 earlier this season, a Newcastle manager perhaps over-informed by a mass of statistical data believes Woltemade is neither fast nor strong enough to play there. But at least he is getting more game time than Yoane Wissa. The £55m summer signing from Brentford scored 19 Premier League goals last season but, although apparently recovered fully from a knee injury, rarely leaves the bench these days and displays increasingly frustrated body language.
Few Newcastle fans are convinced Gordon is the long-term answer at centre-forward but, more immediately, the former Everton winger may regret sharing his views on Sunderland with Newcastle’s website. “The frustrating thing is that they [Sunderland]in my opinion, they’re not a very good team compared to us,” Gordon said. “We shouldn’t lose to them.”
Howe bristled when he was asked if he had underestimated Le Bris’s side but he cannot afford to make similar miscalculations during this season’s concluding seven games. Although Newcastle are 12th in the Premier League his brief remains to deliver the European football that Ross Wilson, the club’s sporting director, maintains should be an annual event.
More immediately, their European exit will finally afford an undeniably fatigued Newcastle a much-needed rest – even if the Middle East war has forced the cancellation of a planned squad break in Dubai this week. Wherever they eventually finish in the league – and Howe’s cause is hardly helped by his Dutch centre-half Sven Botman being sidelined until May after undergoing surgery on a facial fracture on Monday – a summer rebuild beckons.
With Europa League or Conference League qualification almost certainly the best that can be hoped for, it seems likely that perhaps two of Sandro Tonali, Tino Livramento, Bruno Guimarães and Gordon will be sold this summer when veterans including Kieran Trippier and Fabian Schär may also depart. The challenge is to reinvest the resultant cash in constructing a new team. Whether Howe will be around to oversee that project remains to be seen.
