With seven matches remaining in Newcastle’s season, the Magpies are likely to miss out on clinching any European place in the Premier League after the Tyne-Wear derby loss to Sunderland on Sunday, following the disgusting 7-2 loss at Barcelona a few days earlier.
Following the darkest week in the club’s history, Express’ Lee Ryder is reporting that Public Investment Fund will conduct a significant performance review at the end of the 2025/26 campaign, with Eddie Howe and his coaching staff set to be
evaluated.
The good news? PIF seems to be realizing something’s wrong. The bad news? The report makes it sound like Howe will remain on the sidelines until mid-June at the earliest.
According to Ryder, senior figures within NUFC, including sporting director Ross Wilson and CEO David Hopkinson, will provide input, while PIF executives — including chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan — will ultimately determine the direction.
Howe, stubborn as he is, has not indicated any intention to resign more than 24 hours after completing yet another embarrassing day at the pitch, and instead kept throwing out excuses as to why things aren’t quite clicking in Tyneside.
“The rules have made it very difficult to have momentum to go with the speed it initially went with,” Howe said recently. “I don’t know a way we can beat that system. We have to follow the rules that are set, the club desperately want to be ambitious but there is a limit to what we can spend.”
Howe had already referenced missed recruitment windows and the departure of Alexander Isak last summer as setbacks.
“To not recruit for that many windows, I don’t know a team that would not suffer from that,” Howe said. “We certainly have, and then losing Alexander Isak last summer was a considerable blow. But again we can’t feel sorry for ourselves and use excuses.”
Howe has also pointed to the challenge of competing without matching the revenues of bigger, already-established rivals in the Premier League.
“We want to bring the best players to the club and not lose our best players,” Howe said. “So that combination is so important but it becomes more challenging for us because we don’t have the revenues of the other clubs. All we can do is accept the criticism. Whatever words you want to use, I am not going to challenge them. We have to develop.”
With all that, Newcastle’s hierarchy is expected to decide on Howe’s fate only once the campaign is over. As if there wasn’t a half-month long without games ahead and more than enough time to properly cut ties.
