IAN LADYMAN: Newcastle are a shadow of their former selves and it’s the manager’s job to fix it… keeping Eddie Howe would be the smart choice but could he survive a bottom-half finish? It would buck all modern trends if he did

Half an hour after his ordeal in the rain in Manchester, Eddie Howe sat in a chair in a press conference room and it must have felt like a refuge.

He no longer had to watch his tired players being dragged back and forth by Manchester City the way a cat plays with a piece of rope.

The questions Howe faced were not entirely comfortable. They were about the future and what it holds, and deep down Howe knows that no manager can really know, can never really be sure.

And this is a feeling that only hardens and deepens when a team doesn’t win. But away from the sideline and another 90 minutes of uncertainty, Howe could at least deliver a message. He could control that. He could try to set the tone for the rest of the season and God knows his team needs it.

“There won’t be any negativity from me,” Howe said. “There is a lot to play for this season and we are ready to move forward.”

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Howe had a grim face as he spoke, but he can reply that all that demeanor conveys is determination. However, his situation is difficult and almost unique. In

On Saturday, he and his team arrive in Dubai for warm-weather training and Howe will be keenly aware that across the Arabian Gulf, west of Saudi Arabia, Newcastle’s owners will be watching their club’s regression this season and will They will ask what to do about it, if anything to do. he.

The statistics work against Howe, without a doubt. Last season, their first full season, Newcastle finished fourth in the Premier League and reached the Carabao Cup final. They are currently clinging to tenth place in the table and, after yesterday’s modest defeat against City, have no prospects of winning a national title.

Newcastle’s current run of form shows they have won six games in their last 20 in all competitions, against Wolves, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, Fulham and Sunderland.

Equally worrying, however, is the way Newcastle are playing. They are undoubtedly hampered by injuries to key players such as goalkeeper Nick Pope, Kieran Trippier, Joeli)nton, Callum Wilson and now Tino Livramento.

But that’s not unusual this time of year. It is not individual absences that appear to be holding Newcastle back at the moment, but a collective lack of energy, cohesion and method.

The powerful, fast and brave Newcastle of last season no longer exists and the truth is that that version of Howe’s team has barely been seen this season. As such, that is the problem that the administrator must solve. That’s where he, in part, makes his money.

Newcastle’s season began with a thrilling demolition of Aston Villa at St James’ Park on the opening day and they played in equally impressive and recognizable fashion beating City in the Carabao Cup, Manchester United in the Premier League and PSG in the League of Champions.

That 4-1 dismantling of the French champions last October was the show of bravery of the season and represented the crescendo of a run of form that also included that City defeat and an extraordinary 8-0 demolition of Sheffield United at Bramall Lane.

That was the Newcastle that Howe built and coached so expertly last season. But as the restrictions of the Premier League’s spending rules have bitten Saudi ambitions hard, the DNA that seemed so well established at the core of Howe’s team has been depleted at the behest of diminished trust and faith.

What Newcastle do now is debatable. The smart thing to do would be to look at the guy they hired in November 2021, look at his work, remember why they picked him and, indeed, the heights his team reached last season. Too tall? Not necessarily.

This season’s Champions League experience will have been invaluable. However, it is too high to repeat, and it is the distance Newcastle have fallen that haunts Howe now. It’s difficult to move forward quickly in English football these days. It’s no use having petrodollars in your pocket if you can’t spend them.

The fact is that the Saudi’s first manager (if you exclude Steve Bruce) was always going to have the toughest job of any new era of the club. Howe was always going to have the challenge of closing the gap between Newcastle and the established top order that had been open for so long.

Howe will have felt that pressure as his team plane flew east from Manchester last night. Newcastle have ten games left this season and most of them are perfectly acceptable. Only Tottenham at home on April 13 and Manchester United away a week later should raise unusual questions for them.

If Newcastle progress towards the European places, this season will no doubt be seen as a simple change of direction. But could Howe survive a season in which his team finished in the bottom half? If he did, he would go against all modern trends.