When Eddie Howe became Newcastle’s manager and was tasked with navigating a safe passage towards Premier League survival he swiftly realised there were two distinct routes out of the relegation zone.
Both were hazardous but one offered infinitely greater scenic appeal and, ignoring some scary looking hairpin bends, Howe took it.
Rather than configuring Newcastle with a back three well drilled in low blocks and hoping that a possession-light side would remain reasonably adept at sneaking wins on the counterattack, he decided to start creating a front-foot, ball-monopolising, sweet-passing XI.
Rafael Benítez and, more recently, Steve Bruce may have escaped a series of relegation skirmishes by playing with the handbrake on but the former Bournemouth manager was determined to channel his inner Kevin Keegan and do things differently.
It helped that, unlike Benítez – still adored on Tyneside – and Bruce, he was not working for a penny-wise owner in the Mike Ashley mould but extraordinarily wealthy Saudi Arabian overlords determined to make the club the successful centrepiece of a wider exercise in the application of image-altering geopolitical soft power or, as some see it, sportswashing.
The only problem was that Howe did not possess sufficient players suited to his blueprint, has won only two of his 11 games since succeeding Steve Bruce and now needs his near-£90m transfer-market spend to pay dividends.
All that matters now is whether Bruno Guimarães, Kieran Trippier, Chris Wood, Dan Burn and the loanee Matt Targett can ensure Howe succeeds where Bruce, Steve McClaren and Alan Pardew all, to varying extents, failed.
Despite working with very different sets of players the common denominator between those three managers is that, whenever they tried to wean Newcastle off the counterattacking that has, for more than a decade, been the team’s default style, they ran into significant problems.
Benítez, well aware he lacked the requisite midfielders to create, control and sustain a passing rhythm, did not even try, preferring to refine the team’s ability on the break.
Howe finally possesses a choreographer capable of becoming a cornerstone around which to base Newcastle’s rebuild. Brazil’s Guimarães, a dynamic defensive midfielder, has signed from Lyon for an initial fee in the region of £35m and the speed of the 24-year-old’s adaptation to English football will very possibly determine if and when Newcastle will escape the bottom three.
Guimarães, often described as a “complete midfielder”, honed his craft on futsal courts, rarely forfeits possession and is adapt at retaining it in the tightest of tight spots. Much has, quite rightly, been made of Newcastle’s primary weakness being in central defence but a big part of the problem has been the lack of a protective quasi-sweeper anchoring midfield.
Guimarães is not dubbed the “Piano Carrier” for nothing and his enforcement abilities could yet make Jamaal Lascelles and co look an infinitely better back four than they have often appeared this season.
Much, though, hinges on both how Howe’s new boys gel and how those club stalwarts Bruce privately claimed Benítez had “brainwashed” into a cagey counterattacking mindset adjust to the change in managerial vision.
The volte-face in recruitment philosophy has been even more radical. It is impossible to envisage Ashley spending £25m on the 30-year-old Wood, £13m on the 29-year-old Burn and a fee potentially rising to £15m for the 31-year-old Trippier.
Ashley was consistently reluctant to acquire players over 25 because of their lack of resale potential but this policy frequently left the team light on experience and leadership and Newcastle were twice relegated on his watch.
Should survival be secured, the Saudis will, justifiably, claim the so called “Newcastle tax” was well worth paying to Burnley, Brighton and Atlético Madrid.
Although Burn has regularly been rotated at Brighton he has recently been in the form of his career and the 6ft 7in boyhood Newcastle fan may prove one of this month’s most inspired purchases, helping assuage Howe’s pain at missing out on his first-choice defensive targets, Lille’s Sven Botman and Sevilla’s Diego Carlos.
Yet if Wood provides essential attacking cover for the injured Callum Wilson, Newcastle’s principal striker, while also weakening Burnley, Howe could yet have cause to pine for the two gamechanging forwards that got away, namely the exciting Reims teenager Hugo Ekitike and Manchester United’s Jesse Lingard.
Trippier, a right-back still harbouring England ambitions, already looks a future Newcastle captain; which begs the question of the potential effect on the team’s ecosystem should Howe drop the holder of the armband, Lascelles, to create room for Burn. Given Lascelles can be pretty feisty, the manager may need to locate his inner diplomat.
At left-back Targett should offer the sort of width and crosses Howe craves. His presence also creates competition in an over-stocked squad but the manager’s challenge now is to ensure that a decent team on paper pick up points on the pitch.
If not, he will surely lose his beauty contest with Watford’s Roy Hodgson, Burnley’s Sean Dyche, Norwich’s Dean Smith, Everton’s Frank Lampard et al and Benítez’s name may once again be mentioned as the solution to Newcastle’s woes.
It is no exaggeration to say the next few months could make or break Howe’s career.
