The Eddie Howe waiting game
Eddie Howe is an unusual football manager and a different type of character to many of his peers. He steers away from hyperbole and avoids giving the press anything that may be taken out of context. He acts surprised when presented with something that has been making news on social media. In contrast with most other Premier League managers, Howe tries to avoid controversy to the point that he will react in a benign and measured way to incidents that have affected the outcome of games that would send some of his managerial peers into nuclear meltdown.
When Newcastle hit some poor form, the social media inquests start. Everybody has their say on what is going wrong and what must happen for things to improve. A couple of themes crop up and some start to voice these themes as though they are fact, paying little heed to what has gone before or what some of the bigger factors at play may be. Think commentary along the lines that Howe has no plan B, he only wants to sign players from Bournemouth, he has favourites in the team who are undroppable. As much as Howe may want to avoid this sort of discussion, it is impossible to remain fully oblivious when you are the manager of Newcastle United.
There have been various points during Howe’s time in charge that he has been accused of being too loyal in favour of players who he likes as people to the detriment of the team’s results. The first time this really happened was in December 2023 when Newcastle were amid a terrible injury crisis and Dan Burn was having a tough time at left back. It happened again in the early part of this season when Sandro Tonali returned from his ban and initially struggled to get back into the team.
If Howe was influenced in any way by fan opinion and social media (and we should all be thankful that he isn’t), Lewis Hall would have been starting games four months before he did break into the team consistently, and Tonali would have been first name on the team sheet from the moment his ban ended. Was Howe over-cautious and too risk-averse in bringing them in? Or did his management contribute to the current situation where both are in outstanding form?
Lewis Hall
When 18-year-old Hall joined Newcastle on loan from Chelsea, he had made a total of eleven senior appearances. Of his eight Premier League starts, four were at left-back. He made his full debut for Newcastle in the Carabao Cup against Man City playing in midfield (a position in which he played much of his academy football) and was hooked at half-time having endured a torrid 45 minutes. He started (and scored) at left back against Man Utd in the Carabao Cup and then started away at Dortmund and Bournemouth in what were chastening defeats in which he was again hauled off at the break.
Around this time Burn was struggling and there was a clamour for Howe to start giving more minutes to Hall and his full-back colleague Tino Livramento. Howe explained a few months later that Hall was “always brought in with a long-term view, not as a short-term signing”.
It is easy to question why Hall was not playing games when the team was ravaged by injury. However, from Howe’s perspective it could have been detrimental to Hall’s long-term development to throw a young player with barely any senior football into a team that was struggling for form and confidence, particularly as Burn was a different profile of left back with a focus on stepping into central defence in that system when Kieran Trippier went attacking up the right-hand side.
Hall admitted in May 2024 that it took him time to adapt to Howe’s “incredibly difficult” training and that he “wasn’t at the level” he could have been. Hall has attributed this time out of the team to making him “stronger mentally”. It is doubtful that Hall would played so well for Newcastle and have made his England debut this season without this level of careful management from Howe, who prioritised a young player’s long-term development over perceived short-term needs of his team.
Of course, we will never know what would have happened if Hall had started more games in that period, but it is highly unlikely him playing would have turned the team’s fortunes around, and Howe’s decision has been vindicated as he has been repaid for his patience with excellent performances this season.
Sandro Tonali
Sandro Tonali has also had to bide his time to nail down a starting place in the Newcastle team, although his circumstances are different.
Firstly, he signed as an established international, captain of AC Milan and Champions League semi-finalist. Secondly, his ban last season was an unprecedented challenge for Newcastle and Howe to deal with. Tonali started eight of the possible thirteen games (61%) he was available for before his ban, including the first four league games and the first two Champions League games.
However, there were balance issues in the midfield at the start of that season. The team’s form was patchy and Tonali and Bruno wanted to occupy the same position in Howe’s 4-3-3 system. Tonali showed glimpses of his talent, including a magnificent debut against Aston Villa, but he also needed time to adapt to English football and the physical and tactical demands.
It seems logical that the thinking behind signing Tonali was for he and Bruno to play similar roles and interchange throughout games (or even for Tonali to be Bruno’s eventual replacement if the Brazilian was sacrificed for PSR purposes), but the question of how to get these two talents playing effectively together has only recently begun to be answered. Tonali came off the bench for the first three league games after returning from his ban.
He then started the next four league games in a row (of which Newcastle won none, leading to more questions about the midfield balance and his ability to play with Bruno). Tonali’s form had not been great and he then dropped to the bench for the next three league games against Arsenal, Nottingham Forest and West Ham. Since then, he has come back into the team and started four of the last five games (his place on the bench at Brentford easily explained by his obvious fatigue from Liverpool a few days prior). He has also started three of the four Carabao Cup games (only missing the tie with AFC Wimbledon), which is a competition Howe is prioritising.
Part of the discourse around Tonali has centred around the fact that he was substitute for some games when everyone's favourite scapegoat, Sean Longstaff, was starting. Nobody sensible would argue that Longstaff is a better player than Tonali, but Longstaff can perform a specific role in Howe’s system, and the midfield appeared more balanced at that point with Longstaff in it. Up until the West Ham game results were better with Longstaff in the team. He was magnificent in the Arsenal game, before which social media went apoplectic that Tonali had been dropped. Howe was vindicated in the decision.
There was a confusing aspect of Tonali not starting some of those earlier games (Fulham in particular springs to mind) in that he started all six of Italy’s Autumn games playing 90 minutes in all but one of them, and his form was excellent for his national team. It could be argued that international football is not played at the same pace and intensity as Premier League games, but Tonali is evidently regarded as a key cog of the Italy team. The decision to omit Tonali for Fulham was strange as that game came after a week on the training ground when he should have been fit enough and ready to start. Howe effectively admitted after that disappointing result that starting Willock was an error.
The real reasons it has taken Tonali this long to nail down a starting spot are likely a combination of his fitness, his adaption to the English game, the time it has taken him to build a relationship with Bruno and Howe to find a system that suits them both, the inconsistent individual and team performances when he had played previously, Bruno’s long-term form in the deeper midfield position, and the qualities of some of the other midfielders available which has worked in specific games. It is patently not because Eddie Howe thinks Sean Longstaff is a nice lad from North Shields and he just doesn’t fancy playing his Italian international ahead of him.
Howe eases players in
There is a precedent for Howe easing players in gradually. Bruno started on the bench for his first five games, only playing a combined 40 minutes across those matches. Anthony Gordon only started four of sixteen games in his first half-season and didn’t complete a 90-minutes at all in that time. In echoes of Hall’s words about Howe’s training methods, Gordon admitted he wasn’t fit on arrival and said he was warned by Howe and the other players that it would take time to understand the tactical ideas. The rest is history and Gordon started 2023/24 in the first team looking like a new player.
Tino Livramento had to wait until November for his first league start. None of Harvey Barnes, Dan Burn or Sven Botman started their first league games. Chris Wood and Alexander Isak both started immediately but that was because Callum Wilson was injured. Of the other first-team signings made on Howe’s watch, Trippier and Matt Targett both came straight into the starting line-up, although January 2022 was a different scenario to every other transfer window with Newcastle in desperate need of an immediate quality injection.
On the loyalty accusation, anybody who has ever managed people in any industry would tell you that it is important for team culture to have good characters in your team as well as talented ones. You need standard setters and people who work hard, approach their tasks with a positive attitude, put the team above individual accolades and who colleagues respect. This is partly why some of the more technically limited players like Burn, Longstaff, Jacob Murphy and previously Paul Dummett and Matt Ritchie held valued places in the squad for Howe, who regards time on the training ground as the real work and main sphere of his influence. He has considerations to factor in beyond just who is the best at playing football, and he has done an outstanding job of it so far.
Ultimately, this boils down to trust and faith in Howe’s abilities and judgement as a manager. Like every manager, he will get decisions wrong. There have been periods of his tenure where he has not been sure of his best XI and he has been searching for solutions (which he invariably finds).
Inconsistency has dogged this season, and Howe has at times cut a more downbeat figure after games than previously. But he has done enough over his three years for fans to know the level of detail he works in and the likelihood that he will get it right. If he is making decisions that seem strange on the face of it, fans should know that there is a data driven, analytical and individual context to these calls.
Football managers now have access to reams of performance related data tracking players’ physical output, their tactical proficiency and their understanding of what they are being asked to do, not to mention the man management aspect of keeping a squad of players motivated. Fans don’t have access to this same information, and it is important to bear this in mind when drawing conclusions for a 140-character social media vent. It is a nice place to be as a fan to have complete faith that the manager is making decisions in the best interests of the club and players with the singular goal of bringing success.
For now, let’s enjoy our brilliant young left back, and let’s revel in our new midfield superstar. Let’s give thanks that their manager understands that to get the best from them on the pitch in the long-term, they must be looked after off it. Howe will unleash players when it is right for the team and the success of this approach is there for all to see.
HWTL and Merry Christmas!
