The Athletic’s Chris Waugh reported on Monday that Newcastle United’s board has set realistic expectations for the 2025–26 season, emphasizing European — not Champions League — qualification as the benchmark
rather than demanding another top-four finish.
Waugh said the club’s executive team has not made public declarations this year, unlike in 2024–25 when then-CEO Darren Eales and sporting director Paul Mitchell explicitly targeted European qualification — a goal Eddie Howe met by barely delivering Champions League football while also winning Newcastle’s first domestic trophy in 70 years.
With new CEO David Hopkinson and sporting director Ross Wilson only recently joining the club, Waugh noted that neither has yet spoken publicly about their aims.
“Hopkinson and Wilson were not in place heading into the season and are yet to do on-the-record interviews with the wider media,” Waugh wrote, adding that once they do, “that question will be asked.”
However, internal discussions suggest a consistent ambition to keep improving on all fronts as years go by.
“Informal soundings suggest European football remains the expectation, with a belief Newcastle can and should progress beyond the initial ‘league phase’ of the Champions League,” Waugh wrote.
While Champions League qualification for 2026–27 remains the ideal outcome, there is reportedly no mandate that failure to achieve it would be deemed unacceptable.
Waugh emphasized that the board’s targets are shaped, more than anything and simply, realistically, by the financial issues and barriers the club still faces and keeps navigating at the pace PSR and other hurdles impose on it.
Newcastle currently rank eighth in Premier League wage expenditure and seventh in revenue, leading executives to adopt what Waugh called a “realism about what represents relative on-field success in the medium term.”
