Yasir al-Rumayyan will not have to step very far from the front door of his magnificent Riyadh villa to encounter a chameleon. The kaleidoscopically coated members of the lizard family can be found almost everywhere across the Arabian peninsula and the wider Middle East but Newcastle’s chair probably did not expect to meet one at St James’ Park on Monday night.
Given Eddie Howe’s preference for wearing the same black club tracksuit at almost every opportunity he initially seems an unlikely northern European offshoot of the species. Yet in responding to a series of setbacks by, sometimes quite radically, adjusting his tactical colours, Newcastle’s manager has proved himself the cleverest of chameleons.
