If Eddie Howe had really wanted the England job he could quite possibly have secured it last summer but, instead, Newcastle’s manager let it be known that he had unfinished business in the north-east.
Howe has never been shy about discussing a “burning ambition” to preside over his club’s collection of a first major trophy since the Fairs Cup in 1969 and, in the course of a triumphant night on Tyneside, Mikel Arteta was left badly singed by the searing heat of that desire.
