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Almost two decades have passed since Newcastle’s former owner, Mike Ashley, celebrated a Tyne-Wear derby win by gathering a group of club employees together and leading a conga into the St James’ Park boardroom. Sunderland’s then chair, Niall Quinn, and his fellow executives were already inside and responded with polite smiles as they, outwardly at least, failed to take offence. Perhaps fortunately, the visiting manager, Roy Keane, was elsewhere.
Fast forward 18 years and almost regardless of the score when Newcastle host Sunderland on Sunday, the only potential post-match boardroom invasion on the agenda involves a herd of elephants. For no one at Newcastle seems quite ready to spell it out yet, but when Eddie Howe’s team lost 7-2 – 8-3 on aggregate – at Barcelona on Wednesday night and the camouflaging distraction of a Champions League campaign was ripped away, a series of awkward questions resurfaced.
Arguably the biggest elephant in the room is the current war in the Middle East. How might the financial damage sustained by Newcastle’s majority owners, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, affect the club? Will the long delayed announcement of a new training ground at Woolsington Hall, adjacent to the city’s airport, take place now? And what about the heavily postponed decision regarding a potential new stadium? With the Gulf in turmoil will David Hopkinson, Newcastle’s chief executive,stand by his claim, made in December, that Newcastle should rank among the “world’s best clubs” by 2030?
Ross Wilson, Newcastle’s sporting director, has said he can see “no reason” why Howe’s team cannot qualify for Europe every year, but they are presently ninth, seven points behind fifth-placed Liverpool. Champions League football next season looks a remote possibility. With Europa League qualification still achievable, Howe has told his players that victory against Régis Le Bris’ side could prove “a turning point of our season.”
If Newcastle’s manager has not forgotten the pain of December’s 1-0 defeat at the Stadium of Light he is also aware that with no European football on the horizon next term, he would struggle to retain the outstanding Sandro Tonali. The Italy midfielder is “touch and go” to recover from a groin injury in time for the derby and much the same could currently be said about his overall chances of remaining on Tyneside next season.
Given that Tino Livramento remains reluctant to sign a new contract, Anthony Gordon is attracting admiring glances and Kieran Trippier will almost certainly leave when his current deal runs out this summer, a changing of the St James’ guard beckons. Ditto a potentially watershed shift in Howe’s playing philosophy. As well as Newcastle played in the first three halves of their two-legged tie with Barcelona, their ultimate collapse perhaps reflected structural flaws in the team’s high-intensity, man-for-man pressing approach.
Newcastle’s European and domestic commitments dictate they have already played 50 games this season, but the resultant fatigue alone does not adequately explain why they have kept only five clean sheets in their last 35 matches. “We need to keep learning and evolving and changing if necessary,” said Howe post-Barcelona. He readily admits that his side are currently “better out of possession” and “our preferred way of playing is relentless pressing and really good physical performances”.
Any pivot towards a more refined, passing-based approach could involve a reinvention of Nick Woltemade as a No 10. The Germany forward is Newcastle’s £69m record signing but despite scoring 10 goals this season, the former Stuttgart man has been deemed too slow and too poor a presser to operate as a No 9. With Howe’s preferred formations lacking room for a No 10, Woltemade – who scored an own goal at Sunderland in December – has been deployed, largely unsuccessfully, as a No 8 and was benched for both Barcelona games.
With Gordon now Newcastle’s first-choice centre-forward, Yoane Wissa, signed for £55m from Brentford in the summer, also finds himself a near-permanent substitute. The question of what to do about Woltemade and Wissa – a collective £124m investment Newcastle would be unlikely to recoup – represents another sizeable boardroom elephant.
While all the indications are that Newcastle’s hierarchy retain confidence in Howe – and perhaps rightly so considering it is only a year since he choreographed that famous Carabao Cup triumph – St James’ loyalists may become restless should their team fail to end a 10-game winless run against Sunderland in league derbies. “Some games have bigger consequences than others,” conceded Howe, whose cause may be helped by Le Bris’ concerns over four key players – Robin Roefs, Nordi Mukiele, Enzo Le Fée and Dan Ballard – facing late fitness tests. It perhaps helps that Le Bris – making his first visit to St James’ Park – holds a psychology diploma in addition to a doctorate in human physiology and biomechanics, ensuring he will think “medically rather than emotionally” when assessing the results of those fitness checks.
“The derby’s about emotion and control,” Le Bris said on Friday. “The unpredictability’s so high that if, there’s too much emotion, it can take over your mind. If we control our emotion we have the players to manage the game’s momentum; players that know when to go forward and when to slow things down.”
Newcastle lost such control in Catalonia; should they regain it on Sunday then even the normally restrained Howe may be tempted to join a conga.
