RIATH Al-SAMARRAI: Divided Newcastle danger throwing away Eddie Howe

In the year 122 AD, Emperor Hadrian got to work on a wall in Tyneside and his spirit will be heartened to know all was not lost across the next 1,902 years. The practices of ancient Rome are seemingly alive and thriving at Newcastle United.

These are peculiar times indeed at St James’ Park, where the stabbing of backs and the covering of backsides are being performed with no shortage of enthusiasm. Subtlety? Evidently, that’s an area where they still have room to grow.

You may have noted the comments of Paul Mitchell this week and he is their new sporting director, of course.

Good on him for talking — men in his position usually prefer the shadows. Public speaking and accountability, less so. But Mitchell veered towards the unconventional by hastily arranging a press briefing at a point when the quality of his work was under scrutiny.

Whether that was wise is open to debate, but he did have an awful lot to say, much of it about his relationship with Eddie Howe and a poor summer in the market that has only heightened the uncertainty around the latter’s appetite to remain in post.

It was during this chat that Mitchell also slipped something sharp between the shoulder blades of those who did the gig before him.

The previous system had not been fit for purpose, he said. Not enough scouting. Didn’t use enough data. Didn’t sell players well enough to move at full speed in the Profit and Sustainability era.

All of which rang true to some extent, according to those who follow Newcastle closely. But it was strikingly bullish for someone who had just gone for a duck in his first transfer window at the club.

And more so in consideration of the record of those he was pointing his finger at — the recruitment model he criticised was inherited from his predecessor, Dan Ashworth, and weighted more favourably to the views of Howe in concert with two former co-owners, Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi.

As a group, they might have been a little surprised to receive a rough appraisal. As an individual, Howe might feel entitled to look at the new way, which has granted him less influence, and believe the old way was better.

He would also have a body of evidence to back him up.

In the time since the Saudis arrived on Tyneside three years ago, so five windows without Mitchell and one with him, Newcastle hadn’t got much wrong in the market prior to this summer. In fact, few have navigated it so well.

Kieran Trippier, Nick Pope and Dan Burn were aged between 31 and 29, but cost just £35million combined and collectively have played more than 250 games for the club. Strong signings at an important time, those. 

Bruno Guimaraes was 24 when he came in for £40m, so there was a bit of jeopardy there, but now Manchester City have a wandering eye for him and he’s Howe’s captain. Alexander Isak was £63m and today is valued at nine figures. Anthony Gordon is a very fine young player, as is Sven Botman.

If Sandro Tonali shows a sustained level of quality after the gambling mess of his own creation, it would be hard to find a single outright dud among those who came in for a substantial outlay.

That Newcastle sailed close to the PSR wind is hardly unique for a club with grand expectations — that they shot up the table and reached a Wembley final was ample vindication of the approach.

As for Mitchell, he failed to land his one major target this summer, Marc Guehi from Crystal Palace. In short — one window, one walk up the garden path, and a somewhat defensive suggestion that he played only a ‘supporting’ role in the machine, having spent just a couple of months in the job.

If that was a plea for time and understanding from a sporting director, there might be a few managers around the country having a little chuckle about the irony.

To speak with those who have previously worked with Mitchell is to glean a picture of a sharp and organised operator, one whom Mauricio Pochettino valued highly at Tottenham. 

But the whiff of desperation from his comments this week has fed into the existing feeling of a storm at Newcastle, heightening the sense that they are at risk of losing the one figure they badly need to keep — Howe.

It was via some superb journalism from Craig Hope on these pages that so much has come to light about the club’s internal turbulence and how it has affected their head coach’s position.

A fair chunk of that reporting illuminated the sudden departures of Staveley and Ghodoussi in July, when multiple sources ascribed the loss of two popular faces to boardroom tensions.

Darren Eales, the CEO, is said to have fed back to the Saudis that the pair were too involved in daily operations and it had become an obstruction, leaving two of Howe’s key allies effectively forced out.

That doesn’t sound terribly pretty and Howe almost immediately alluded to his unease during Newcastle’s pre-season tour of Germany.

Naturally it was a separate aspect of his timing that caught attention, because Gareth Southgate had resigned from the England post two days earlier — Howe’s comments went up like a flare and he is long enough in the tooth to have known precisely how it would look.

His desire for that job one day is well known, as is the FA’s long-standing interest in him. 

He has been mentioned in their succession chats for some time, dating back to his Bournemouth days, and there’s a school of thought that Lee Carsley’s audition period was partially contrived around the possibility that Howe might become available without the need to pay his club.

It should be obvious to Newcastle’s suits that a manager who took them from 19th in the table to the Champions League is worth keeping happy and it goes double for one so popular with the supporters.

Far from furthering the impression of a club with divisions and splits, they should be following his suggestions a little more closely.

Failing that, build a wall around him. To do otherwise would be akin to plunging the knife into their own back.

Golf’s mega money is unsustainable

Scottie Scheffler’s victory at the Tour Championship last weekend threw up some mind-scrambling numbers. 

With £19million added to his account for the win, it took his season’s earnings to £47.4m, which can be broken down to £9,282 for every shot he hit in 2024 and £631,370 for every tournament he contested. 

There is no doubting he is the finest player in the world by a massive distance. But it is just as true that golf has lost its mind with these unsustainable prize funds at a time when television audiences are dwindling fast. 

The more they inflate this ludicrous balloon, the louder the bang when it inevitably bursts. 

No false dawn for Draper 

Sport has a remarkable ability to deliver new fascinations just as the old ones fade from view. In the case of Andy Murray’s succession in the lineage of British tennis, Jack Draper has a long way to go but he put in a pretty spectacular shift at the US Open. 

There is nothing about his game that suggests a false dawn.