Eddie Howe v Paul Mitchell – Who will win AND who will lose?

A lot of talk on Thursday morning about Eddie Howe and Paul Mitchell.

This follows the Newcastle United Sporting Director doing a group interview with a number of journalists who all regularly cover the club.

Paul Mitchell speaking to them after this latest Premier League transfer window which closed last week.

Mitchell was announced as the new Newcastle United Sporting Director back on 4 July 2024.

The same week the Newcastle United owners finally allowed Dan Ashworth to leave his garden and join Manchester United, now they (NUFC) had got their replacement.

It had been crystal clear to anybody with any common sense, that no way the club’s owners were going to allow a situation whereby they would let Ashworth start working at Man U, with then them looking weak in terms of net as yet getting a credible replacement.

Anyway, good to see Paul Mitchell (pictured below) come out so soon and give an interview after this much discussed transfer window, to give us some guidance as to what had and hadn’t gone on this summer. What the future holds and so on.

No sensible person would draw similarities between now and back when we had Mike Ashley, however, I do think communication has been pretty poor from the Newcastle United owners/hierarchy, certainly in more recent times, the best part of a year or so.

I think it was crucial that somebody else senior at the club gave some feedback and explanations after this transfer window, rather than just leaving it to the next Eddie Howe press conference, as is usually the case. Where Eddie has to usually answer questions on anything and everything. With the international break, it would have also meant a void/vacuum of a couple of weeks with nothing from the club, if the media hadn’t been given anybody to speak to, before Eddie Howe spoke to them before the Wolves match.

So anyway, the Newcastle United Sporting Director met with this group of journalists and they have all now reported back to the fans on what was said.

I think a few things to say at this point.

This is very different to the same group of journalists handed the same set of quotes from Paul Mitchell, as opposed to them all sitting with him, presumably also getting the chance to ask questions as well, not just the Newcastle United Sporting Director reading from a prepared statement!

Just like ourselves watching a match where we all come away with different views of what we have just witnessed, no doubt the same with these NUFC journalists, in terms of what they think they heard and how it was delivered by Paul Mitchell.

Different people will always interpret what somebody says slightly differently, sometimes a lot differently.

Sometimes journalists will deliberately interpret things differently…

What we all know of course is that they are all competing for our attention, to buy their newspapers, to click onto their articles.

They are all going to put their own spin on what they have heard and use it to try and get noticed ahead and above of the others, so it is predictable that they are going to try and make it as juicy as possible. They wouldn’t be doing their jobs otherwise.

Which of course is why the recurring theme throughout all the write-ups from this interview, is to varying extents, turning it into an ‘Eddie Howe v Paul Mitchell – Who will win AND who will lose?’

Newcastle United Head Coach v Newcastle United Sporting Director.

Who will win the fight to be the main man?

In these situations, it is only natural that the Sporting Director will want to have as much power and influence as possible, the same for the Manager/Head Coach.

We have seen this all too clearly at Newcastle United before, where when the person operating as the Sporting Director (even if not necessarily having that exact title) has had the upper hand, with massive extremes as to how well or not that worked.

Despite the overall Mike Ashley nightmare, Graham Carr at times played a blinder and indeed, who knows what might have happened if Ashley had fully backed Carr when it came to more expensive and more ambitious suggestions that he put forward to the then owner. Despite that, we did have for example the signings in summer 2011 where Graham Carr discovered contract clauses were in operation, whereby he got Demba Ba for nothing due to a relegation release cause for £0 if West Ham went down, whilst Yohan Cabaye had a £4.5m release clause at Lille. Those two absolute stunning signings just failed to propel us into the Champions League.

At the other extreme, we then saw Mike Ashley deceive Kevin Keegan. Having told KK that he would be the main man and have full control and final say on all transfers in and out, he instead secretly gave that power to Dennis Wise (surely the most horrific of all people Mike Ashley brought into our club) who had somehow became the most powerful person working at NUFC.

Anyway, back to Eddie Howe v Paul Mitchell, Newcastle United Head Coach v Newcastle United Sporting Director.

I don’t think this is any different to what happens at pretty much every other major club that employs a Sporting Director.

It is simply a case of over a period of time working out how best they can work together to get the best possible joint outcome.

Anybody who thinks the Newcastle United owners are going to suddenly strip all power from Eddie Howe after the minor/major miracles he has performed so far, I don’t think you could be more wrong.

I think there will be lines drawn in the sand at Newcastle United.

For example, in no circumstances can I ever see the day when a signing is imposed on Eddie Howe that he hasn’t agreed to.

That would be a disaster for Newcastle United. If we went down the Chelsea route whereby the manager has no say whatsoever on which players are bought and sold, we will fail for sure.

On the other hand, no manager or head coach has absolute power these days. This used to be the case, or at least pretty close to it in decades gone by, but not now. Even the all conquering Pep Guardiola doesn’t have that at Manchester City. At times he accepts that decisions need to be made, at times players sold that he ideally would have liked to keep, in order for a far better overall outcome moving forward.

Eddie Howe has said himself much the same this summer, that there has to be a middle ground when it comes to working with a Sporting Director and indeed how he (Eddie Howe) operates as part of the overall club.

The Head Coach wasn’t happy at all, the same as the fans and everybody else connected with NUFC, when both Minteh and Anderson were sold. However, as he has said on any number of occasions since, the club needed to sell to cover the PSR shortfall AND the outcome overall WAS a positive. In terms of Eddie Howe saying that rather than key players such as Bruno or Isak sold, it was a couple of young squad players who he’d reluctantly had to accept, needed to be traded to solve that very severe immediate crisis.

To those in the media and indeed any fans, to want to claim/believe that the Newcastle United recruitment strategy is suddenly a total shambles, is going way over the top. For starters, we can’t judge this summer 2024 transfer window in isolation. We have to see it in light of previous ones under Eddie Howe and these NUFC owners, plus also what happens in future Newcastle United windows, especially January 2025 and summer 2025, only then will we have a clear picture of whether the available money/PSR flex has been used in the best possible way.

As well as improving the inherited players to a magnificent degree, Eddie Howe has been at the heart of a stunning success story these past 32 months when it comes to the transfer market.

To bring in the likes of Trippier, Pope, Burn, Bruno, Isak, Tonali, Barnes, Wood, Targett, Hall, Livramento, Botman, Minteh, Gordon, Kelly… that is quite unbelievable. A lot of money spent, but when compared to pretty much every other major club, these players have collectively proved outrageous value AND whilst a lot of money spent, still nowhere near as much as the usual suspects in the same time period.

There seems to be a belief amongst some fans that Paul Mitchell has been brought in as a deliberate move to try and undermine Eddie Howe. As Mike Ashley did with Dennis Wise and Kevin Keegan.

However, I find it impossible to credit that the Newcastle United owners would in any way want to risk anything like this, never mind believing that they would do it deliberately.

By a country mile, Eddie Howe has been the best signing these Newcastle United owners have made so far and I have no doubts that they believe that as well. Indeed, all credit to them on this front, when you consider that despite the immediate horrific mid-season crisis they inherited back in October 2021, the owners and their advisers took their (what felt at the time, a very long!) time to identify the best possible candidate and narrowed it down to two people. The fact that the other one was Unai Emery, simply reinforces that these Newcastle United owners have got their judgement right, when making the really massive decisions at the club, so far.

There is every reason to believe that with his CV, Paul Mitchell can do an excellent job as Newcastle United Sporting Director.

However, that will be working alongside Eddie Howe, not above him.