For Eddie Howe, the darkest hour really did come before the dawn. It was early November 2021 and the then unemployed manager headed to bed one Tuesday night reeling from a late phone call informing him that he had not, after all, landed a new job at Newcastle United.
If the disappointment was crushing, a subsequent call early the following morning would, in Howe’s words, prove “life-changing”. The news that Unai Emery had changed his mind, withdrawn a verbal agreement to succeed Steve Bruce at St James’ Park and decided to stay at Villarreal instead was followed by a question: might Howe still be interested in swapping the south coast for Tyneside?
Two Wembley finals and a League Cup triumph later, the former Bournemouth manager is in the midst of a second Champions League campaign and welcomes to St James’ Park on Sunday an Aston Villa side who have been under Emery’s charge since October 2022.
In disrupting the Premier League’s traditional “top six”, Villa and Newcastle are rocking the establishment boat but top-tier spending rules have not made it easy. Both clubs are desperate for the additional revenue that would accompany being part of next season’s Champions League.
Emery’s side currently sit third, 10 points ahead of Newcastle but, undeterred, Howe knows his chameleon-like team are only three adrift of fourth-placed Liverpool. Victory against a Villa side potentially fatigued by Thursday night’s Europa League win at Fenerbahce would confirm his belief that a top-four finish remains a realistic target.
The only problem is that no one knows which Newcastle will emerge from the tunnel. If Emery hopes it will be the anaemic version that surrendered so tamely at Sunderland last month, he is well aware that on their day Howe’s inconsistent players are capable of beating almost anyone.
Should the ankle injury sustained by Bruno Guimarães during last Wednesday’s 3-0 win against PSV Eindhoven sideline Newcastle’s captain on Sunday, home fans will fear the consequences. Since arriving from Lyon four years ago, Guimarães has missed 10 Premier League games and Howe’s team have won none of them.
“I wondered how long it would be before that one came up,” said Newcastle’s manager when he faced the media on Friday. “Bruno’s just a very good player, a very talented footballer, a very creative footballer. He has the ability to change games. If we’re without him we have to come up with a solution; we’ll try and figure out all avenues.”
Perhaps the most obvious would involve asking Lewis Miley to take Guimarães’s customary place to the right of Sandro Tonali and Joelinton in the midfield of Howe’s trademark 4-3-3 formation.
The immensely talented 19-year-old, who has impressed as a stand-in right-back just lately, looks a future England No 6 and could in time help Tonali provide Newcastle with the sort of ball-retaining control that, for all his catalytic dynamism, Guimarães does not really offer.
Right now though, Howe’s team are invariably at their best playing on the counterattack and, paradoxically, often look almost more dangerous without the ball than with it. Even so, it would do Newcastle no harm to have a player as tidy in possession as Miley when they visit Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday for a Champions League match that will determine whether they catapult straight into March’s round of 16 or face a draining two-leg playoff next month.
“It goes without saying that we were desperate to keep Lewis last summer,” said Howe, hinting that the widely admired Miley had been unsettled. “He was desperate to play and show his qualities; he didn’t want a season where he wasn’t involved enough to develop his career.
“With young players it’s always a delicate balance for me because I’m under pressure to win here but Lewis has taken his opportunities this season and performed really well.”
After Miley ended the PSV game wearing the armband, Guimarães predicted he would eventually become Newcastle captain. “Lewis is very relaxed, very calm, unfazed,” said Howe. “He’s got that ability to control his emotions and be unwavering in both difficult and successful moments. He experiences both in exactly the same manner. He’s unruffled. He’s got that inner belief and inner strength that says, ‘I believe in myself and I can handle everything that’s thrown at me’. To be a successful captain, one that other players look to as the leader, you need those qualities.”
Howe, too, is a consistent personality and not merely in demeanour. Indeed, some critics believe his devotion to 4-3-3 has sometimes made Newcastle too easy to second-guess and overly dependent on whether their wingers, Anthony Gordon in particular, are having good or bad days.
One solution would be a reconfiguration featuring Nick Woltemade operating in the No 10 role he was surely born to fill rather than rotating the £69m Germany striker with a more conventional No 9 in the £55m signing Yoane Wissa.
Despite acknowledging that the pair have “different strengths”, Newcastle’s manager seems disinclined to put this theory into practice and prefers to see his two strikers competing for a starting place. “They have to take on the challenge,” he said. “You want the whole team feeling the same, that one bad performance can cost them their place.”
Howe did not need to explain that a poor collective display against Villa will only diminish his hopes of embarking on a third Champions League adventure this autumn.
