Howe leaves Newcastle | The Football Boardroom

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0:30Christian Purslow:Christian, Eddie Howe's gone. He's left Newcastle. I can't believe it, but I can believe it. You know, we've discussed this, the situations around him, the recruitment, PIF, all these elements which I need to get into in this, what is really an emergency podcast. But it's an emergency podcast where, you know, you've predicted that this has been coming. And just a very quick timeline on this to build up to Eddie Howe's departure. I mean, there's no doubt that he He loves the club and Newcastle United are not only losing a head coach, a manager, they're also losing a huge fan. He absolutely loves the club.

1:06Christian Purslow:But clearly he feels that events, the timeline, that this is now the time to leave. Look, he's bound to be in demand. But just quickly on the timeline, in this year alone, February, they lost to Brentford at home. They're one or two fans behind the dugout who had a go at him. This is ignoring all the noise which we inevitably get online about Eddie Howe. Then March, the home loss to Sunderland. Difficult to do as a Newcastle manager because of obviously the rivalry up there. Then later that month, on the 31st, the chief executive, David Hopkinson, in a series of interviews with local reporters, he said, I don't have a stance on his future about Eddie, which was taken to be, you know, you've basically only got a few days to games to save your job.

1:53Christian Purslow:Hopkinson then rode back on that, on his clumsy comments. then April that there were talks with with PIF about Eddie's future May of course they finished 12th bad results have not been good recently under under Eddie Howe but then there seems to be an agreement that they would refresh there would be better recruitment they would attack the the new season so they did seem to be an element of togetherness Newcastle United and then of course July the 8th that bombshell Bruno Grimera saying I want to leave Newcastle United I mean that is devastating I mean for Eddie Howe was very close to Bruno Guimaraes knows how important he is as a leader on the pitch off the pitch fantastic player July the 17th a player that he wanted Manzambi chose Aston Villa and then it looked really like the the clock was ticking so finally on that it does seem that there was a as a conversation he let PIF Newcastle's owners know that he wanted to leave and they said give us enough time to to find your successor and now it looks like well he years off and Matthias, I can never pronounce his name, Jaiss Lu, I think is the pronunciation of the German coach.

3:04Christian Purslow:Look, he's got big boots to fill when he arrives from Al-Athli.

3:07Henry Winter:The most important moment, I think, was that big powwow that took place just towards the end of the season when a full entourage of the PIF representatives, the Saudi owners of Newcastle came over and... 25 of them. Yeah, I think that was a really, really important moment because it came at a time when those of us who'd been following this project closely from day one were feeling that this project was changing quite dramatically. To say it was stalling would be an understatement. It felt to me like it was being re-based. And what do I mean by that? I mean that I'm quite sure when the biggest investment fund in the world, run by one of the most powerful businessmen on the planet, bought Newcastle in 21.

4:04Henry Winter:And I will never forget being at Aston Villa when that dropped and that precipitated a lot of action in the Premier League that we've talked about in terms of the reaction of all of us as potential competitors to the richest company in the world owning Newcastle United. It was genuinely terrifying for many teams who knew that could be formidable in terms of a change at Newcastle. And really very ambitious statements from day one about Newcastle's goals and targets. And they were quite clear. They weren't messing about. They wanted Newcastle to become one of the, in a tiny group of the leading football clubs on the planet.

4:47Henry Winter:And Eddie started well under PIF and really, in fact, over most of his time, had done very well. But it became more and more obvious that the inherent obstacles to that stated project of English football and European football domination, the inherent obstacles mainly around the regulatory framework that they have to deal with, were going to make that project slower, more difficult, maybe even impossible. and I think it's fair to say by the time Eddie sat down with his owners in April they had clocked that that was the case and so much turbulence Henry had taken place in the boardroom at Newcastle in the preceding couple of years from when Amanda Stavely left we had the change of chief executive we had a period where there was no chief executive we had a change of sporting director we had the summer of 25 when more or less Eddie was on his own trying to deal with the ISAC issue and trying to deal with in the end a recruitment that let's face it by the end of this season everyone would admit even Eddie didn't go well so I feel as though that meeting was the beginning of the end I mean Malik Chao

6:12Christian Purslow:obviously was was one of the I agree with you one of the few successes Wissa was injured Volta Marder started well but they didn't seem to know whether he was a 10 or a 9, anyone who saw him developing. He was playing in midfield by the end of the season. Which was crazy. I mean, he's a 10. He's not a 9. He's a 10. Anyway, that's tactical stuff.

6:33Henry Winter:It felt like a trolley dash with the Isak money where they settled for their fifth and sixth choices because they faffed about over Isak for so long. And I'm sure that Piff would have said on the back of that, Eddie, you know, last summer it didn't go well. We let you have what you wanted, which was much more control over recruitment and all things football than perhaps many clubs would give their manager. And now we've got a chief executive. Now we've got a sporting director. We need and want this summer to be different. And now this issue around rebasing of the Project H. I think the messaging would have been along the lines of we're certainly, we need to be absolutely sure of sales before we commit to buys.

7:26Henry Winter:We actually would like to run a balanced budget. In other words, we're done with pouring huge amounts of money in. And there were signals elsewhere in the PIF world that their appetite for overseas investment in sport was dwindling. We had the Live Golf situation where they essentially pulled funding on their competitive golf tour to the PGA. And even messages around Newcastle that made me feel as though their strategic approach to this investment has changed. We started to read, for example, that they were contemplating bringing in partners to address the new stadium issue. Staggering. the richest investment fund in the world that wants to conquer the world of club football might want some help in funding a stadium.

8:20Christian Purslow:But don't you think that we should cut Eddie some slack? If he lost Amanda Stavely, who was pretty much, it seemed like, the sort of glue that kept parts of the club together. Eddie liked her, the board obviously liked her, the players liked her. So she left. Eddie has been the one constant in all this. And I think that...

8:39Henry Winter:And he's outperformed, by the way.

8:41Christian Purslow:And also, you know, you talk about sales. Well, he had to sell Anthony Gorn to Barcelona. What was that? So 70-odd million. He's had to sell Tonali to Spurs. That was sort of 90, 100 million. He's now going to lose Bruno Grosso probably for 80 million. You could understand why he was, he might have felt, understandably, that where was the backing? Where was the direction of the club? As you say,

9:08Henry Winter:I don't think there's any mystery. I absolutely think at that offsite, that change of direction would have been discussed. And I'm calling it a rebasing, a rebasing of their strategic objectives, an acknowledgement. Whatever David Hopkinson says about we want to be in the conversation to be global number one by 2030, by the time that meeting took place three months ago, it was obvious that under the current rules, and those rules, by the way, the new rules taking effect this year, SCR, make it even harder than it was under the previous P &S rules. For a club like Newcastle to compete, I would go so far as to say, OK, the rules are designed to prevent a nation state like Saudi Arabia buying a football club and buying success overnight.

9:58Henry Winter:I would say they are constructed with that in mind. And that realisation, take a little bit of time for that to sink in with the piff. Eddie's known it. Eddie's been living with it. Eddie's been living with this, you know, we need to be number one. And at the same time, you know, two summers ago, being forced to sell Eddie Anderson for 35 million quid and take a Greek goalie he didn't fancy and not get a sell on clause. So the impact of that regulatory regime on Newcastle's ability to compete is not disputed. But what's changed, in my opinion, is the attitude of the ownership, their desire, their ambition to fight those rules, challenge those rules, do whatever it takes to beat those rules.

10:46Henry Winter:I think that was what was communicated at the end of last season. And Eddie, we'd love you to stay, but it's going to be different. We're going to get we're going to focus on excellent selling. How many messages have we seen from this boardroom in the last two months about we're going to do a brilliant job at selling? No manager on the planet wants to hear that, let alone one who has enjoyed a moment in time where Newcastle were threatening to truly compete at the upper echelons. He's taken to the Champions League. He's had big days at St. James's Park fighting the best teams in the league. And it must have felt really weird to be told we're rebasing downwards our expectation.

11:28Henry Winter:And at that time, and I'm going to say H, I thought then if I'd been Eddie in that room, I'd have said, totally understand it. Like you, I deeply regret how difficult this framework makes it for us. I didn't anticipate you guys, you know, perhaps shifting your approach to investing actual money. And maybe it's the time for you to find somebody else. That's what I thought was going to happen at the end of the season. And so I was very surprised to see us get into June and July. We're now, you know, we're now right at the end of July. And then suddenly we hear Eddie's gone. So what changed between that meeting and today?

12:08Henry Winter:That's what I want to know.

12:09Christian Purslow:well I think some of the well alluding to what you've said I think some of the uh the transfer strategy was for young and inexperienced and he was selling established winners for potential and I'm amazed that there's some Newcastle fans who are actually celebrating it's only a small number I think that most of them appreciate that there was a good man a good manager whose heart was in the club it wasn't simply a you know a paycheck for him there was an emotional connection which is so important for uh for newcastle fans to feel that their manager has that in them that his heart is in the club is in the city eddie and jason tinnell clearly absolutely it was but do you think they've had a row with do you think they've had a row with i don't know i think it's a combination with ross wilson or with the saudis but possibly but i just think this is a culmination of things.

13:04Christian Purslow:I mean, we also have to remember that this is five years in a draining job in a goldfish bowl like Newcastle United. Fantastic place. But everything revolves around this cathedral on the hill, this great sort of football. I mean, you go to Newcastle on non-match days and it's like match days elsewhere. Everyone's wearing the club shirts. It's absolutely crazy. All the conversations are around anything that goes on around Newcastle United. So maybe there's some sort of emotional and physical draining element of five years of trying to be the messiah. And as you say, dealing with all these difficult situations.

13:38Christian Purslow:I mean, let's look at the revenue. When he came in, the club's revenue was about sort of 140 million. And now it's about 355. I mean, you know, Chelsea are 150, 160 million pounds ahead of that. That's Morgan Rodgers plus some as well. Newcastle United's matchday revenue is 50 odd million, maybe a little bit more. Spurs is 126, obviously, because they've got a new stadium and a fantastic training ground.

14:04Henry Winter:That's at the root of the regulatory obstacle point. Fundamentally, even with some of the fastest growing revenues in the Premier League in the last three or four years, they're still less than half their main rivals for Premier League supremacy. And as we've repeatedly told our audience, and as I think people are increasingly understanding under the new squad cost rule, literally under those rules, if you've got half the revenues, you're allowed to spend half the money on wages of those rivals. And that is at the heart of these player sales. That is at the heart of the Saudi owners rebasing their expectations, acknowledging the realism of where Newcastle can realistically aspire to be, which is all other things being equal in the long run.

14:58Henry Winter:If teams perform largely in line with their wage bill and over 20 years, that correlation is very high age, then Newcastle finishing seventh is in fact performing to plan. And that's why, and I'm intrigued by your observations on what the fans are saying, in most of Eddie's tenure, he's been outperforming against those budgetary assumptions. And but this season, we shouldn't gloss over it. This season, for lots of reasons, went wrong. And Eddie has to take responsibility for that because there's no arguing with a 12 pace finish. And there's no arguing that when he had a very high level of control over that last summer's activity, it didn't go well.

15:43Henry Winter:There are huge mitigations around the changing faces in the boardroom, but it didn't go well. And I thought that end of season meeting with his ownership would have been a very challenging meeting. And as I say, for lots of reasons, I thought it would end there, that it would suit both sides to say, you know what? We've had a good crack at it, but it's time for somebody else to take the mantle. But it didn't. It carried on. It was as though there was an understanding. We're going to get these player sales done. We're going to reinvest in a different profile of player and we're going to message and manage that this is going to be a slightly longer journey.

16:19Henry Winter:But we're all going to play nicely together in the sandpit and crack on. And I just sense something's changed in the last four to eight weeks. Maybe it was Bruno. Maybe Eddie said, look, I'll go with Anthony and I'll go with Tonali. And thought he could hold on to the captain and the best player. And then he's got the nod from ownership in the last couple of weeks. Look, we're sorry. Bruno's going to go as well. We want to take the money and we want to spend some of it, but not all of it. Maybe that was the straw that broke the camel's back. But I sense something has changed in the last four to eight weeks.

16:57Christian Purslow:Maybe Bruno was the knockout blow, but I think we can rewind to this time last year. His pre-season, Eddie Howe's pre-season, Newcastle's pre-season, was absolutely scrambled by the Isak delay. As you say, if that had been sorted out earlier on and they'd come to a quicker financial agreement with Liverpool, who were obviously haggling over the millions for it, they might have got Ekertike, who obviously went to Liverpool as well. He might have been able to spend more time betting in players. He might have got Volta Marder earlier, rather than on the back of the Under-21 Championships. So I think there's a lot of sympathy for Eddie Howe out there.

17:39Christian Purslow:I think also you mentioned the stadium. That stadium, as we've seen from the figures, simply doesn't generate enough revenue because a lot of Newcastle fans, they'll have a drink in town in the strawberry and then they'll head into the ground. It's not like being in the concourses. None of that's new, H. None of that's new. Absolutely. But then isn't that down to Piff to have addressed that? The moment they got in five years ago, I'm sure people were telling them, you've got to sort the stadium issue out. They haven't even, and this is another impressive feather in Eddie Howe's camp, they haven't really addressed properly the training ground.

18:16Christian Purslow:He's actually had to deal that with a subpar training ground. You've seen all that. I mean, you know Boddy Moore. Yeah, I do.

18:25Henry Winter:I think that's a fair observation and for our audience's benefit, anyone wondering whether that's because they've been focusing on deploying their capital into the team rather than infrastructure. They can do as much as they like on infrastructure. That isn't impacted. So why haven't they? If it doesn't impact on PSR,

18:42Christian Purslow:get stuck into the stadium and the training ground.

18:45Henry Winter:I think the focus, for lots of reasons, the focus post-Ashley was on sorting out football. Okay. And because without a team that's competing every year in the Champions League, every year trying to win the title, then the justification for a massive increase in capacity is a lot less clear.

19:09Christian Purslow:He got them into the Champions League twice. He won their first domestic trophy in 70 years. He kept his part of the bargain. I don't think Piff have.

19:18Henry Winter:You're making it sound like Eddie Howe's leaving because they haven't moved into a new stadium or Eddie Howe's leaving because the commercial growth hasn't been great. Eddie Howe's leaving because his owners have signaled a more restrictive approach to allocation of capital. OK, listen to his interview last night where he's basically saying, I don't know what's going on the players because I don't manage that anymore. That's what's really going on there. It's money, power, politics. We're not putting as much money in in the transfer market. The power on the decision making around who's doing recruitment is skewing back towards the chief executive and the sporting director, Eddie.

20:00Henry Winter:And the politics of this is we gave you all that you wanted a year ago and we wasted a huge amount of money because, you know, Eddie invested political capital in recruitment. And nobody would sit here and pretend that the Volta Marda and VISA transactions were a great use of their capital. And so I sense that definitely impacted relations in the last 12 months or so, led to the reset I've talked about. And ultimately, as I say, I felt that made the fork in the road inevitable. And the only bit I was surprised about, you know this, I've been saying it to you for six weeks, H. You asked me on the show last week, what's going on at Newcastle?

20:45Henry Winter:I said, we need to do a show on this because it's been driving me mad that it was blindingly obvious that that project was being completely reset and that that had implications for Eddie, who we are both a huge fan of. And it felt to me, if Eddie stuck around, he would start to see his reputation damaged by the inevitable loss of momentum in their results and performances, which always flows from when you reduce capital allocation and you sell your best players and you replace them with less good players. We've all seen that movie. And I didn't think Eddie Howard would want to star in that movie, H.

21:23Christian Purslow:Well, if it's a movie, I think you'll still find his local hero. Christian, we need to wrap it up, but I think that Eddie Howe will be remembered on Tyneside for that trophy, for that incredible... Brilliant day. Brilliant day. He will be remembered also for developing players, for making players even better. He will also be remembered, and we might be having a completely different conversation if the FA hadn't given Tuchel that contract extension, as the next England manager. One thing you can guarantee with Eddie Howe is that there'll be big clubs interested in him. And I bet when he returns with that club, whoever they may be, to St.

21:59Christian Purslow:James' part, he will get a fantastic reception. Because maybe the new guy might be struggling and people will appreciate even more what a fantastic job Eddie Howe did over five years in difficult circumstances.

22:14Henry Winter:I'll give you two little thoughts on that. I don't often do this, but I couldn't help but notice when there was a lot of speculation about Manchester United round about the time of Michael Carrick's confirmation. No less a personality than Roy Keane said if he could go and get one manager for Man United, it would be Eddie Howe. That's a hell of a testimony. OK. And the second is a counterfactual. Your favourite subject, England. Let me tell you, if Thomas hadn't had that extension and you think of the mood of this nation a couple of weeks ago, the morning after we got knocked out you know there had been plenty of people out there saying we tried it didn't quite work with Thomas let's get Eddie Howe in the door and uh you know let's think about what those might have been I see he's saying he wants a good break now we wish him all the best on that break it's been an unbelievably roller coaster ride for Eddie at Newcastle but most people in the game will know He's done an incredibly difficult job in incredibly difficult circumstances.

23:21Henry Winter:And Newcastle will be the story that we keep on talking about.