Gary Neville has been talking about Eddie Howe and Newcastle United.
The Sky Sports pundit speaking as the season has less than four weeks to run for NUFC.
Gary Neville referring back to summer 2025: “The transfer business at the end of the window in the summer was a real problem for them. They ended up with [Nick] Woltemade and [Yoane] Wissa and that’s just not paid off yet.”
The Newcastle United owners refusing to allow Alexander Isak to leave until transfer deadline day was a major factor in what happened. Eddie Howe not getting the strikers that headed his list of targets, plus the fact that the ones he did end up getting arrived far too late.
A full pre-season of preparation with no senior striker and of the signings overall, only one of the six having a proper pre-season with the rest of the Newcastle United squad.
So what should be the plan now?
Gary Neville sure of what should happen next: “I think full faith and trust in Eddie Howe is the way to go. They have got a really good manager. Where at some clubs it’s easier to say ‘let’s shift the manager and keep the players because they’ve got five or six-year contracts’, [it’s] absolutely the other way around at Newcastle. They will be thinking ‘if we lost him [Howe], we’ve lost an eight-and-a-half out of 10 manager, someone who’s a real solid performer – reliable, consistent, someone who’s got a great attitude’.”
The summer 2026 transfer window opens in seven weeks time, on Monday 15 June.
This week the Newcastle United owners are descending on Tyneside for some key meetings.
Yasir Al-Rumayyan and the other directors set to meet senior club staff to discuss key issues such as progressing the big infrastructure projects, a much bigger capacity stadium and state of the art new training complex.
The Newcastle United owners also set to talk to Eddie Howe when the meetings at Matfen Hall take place, Gary Neville telling Sky Sports: “I hope they’re sitting down with Eddie Howe and they’re going through [the squad] and he’s saying ‘these are the players I want, he’s a shift for me, these are the players I’m going to buy into for next season, I want to get these four or five in, and I want our business done early while everyone’s thinking about the World Cup’. They are a really good side, I like watching them and they’re going to need to back their manager properly, buy into him, back him. That’s what I’d do if I were Newcastle because I think they’ve got one of the very best there and I think he’ll get them back up challenging for Champions League next season.”