Matthias Jaissle has a rather impressive win rate across his relatively young career, but is it enough to keep Newcastle fans happy after Eddie Howe’s departure…
Newcastle fans have been left reeling by the news that Eddie Howe has resigned as manager of Newcastle this morning – but the bloke set to take over has left even more people scratching their heads.
Howe will leave the club in the coming days after five years in charge, telling the club he wants to take a break from football. According to The Athletic, the departure is amicable and the Magpies are already in talks with a potential replacement.
Newcastle have opened talks with Matthias Jaissle of Al Ahli, who has also has success in the Champions League with Red Bull Salzburg, but remains largely unknown to a UK audience, but the soon-to-be-former Al Ahli manager is known to Newcastle’s owners, as the Saudi PIF own both clubs.
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Jaissle does, thankfully for Geordies, have a decent managerial record – albeit not in any of the major world leagues.
His managerial career started with FC Liefering, who he joined seven years after ending his bang-average playing career that saw him play just 60 league games for 1899 Hoffenheim in Germany, although he did play one game for Germany’s U21s side.
Although only managing Liefering for just 17 days in 2021, he took charge of 17 days and won 11 of them – giving him a win percentage of a rather impressive 64.71%, finishing second but losing the title on goal difference.
Up front for them was the now-Manchester United striker Benjamin Sesko, who scored 21 goals that season.
From there, he was quickly snapped up by Red Bull Salzburg, where he romped the Austrian Bundesliga with back-to-back league titles, mainly thanks to German striker Karim Adeyemi who finished top scorer on 19 goals in the 2021/22 season. He also won the Austrian Cup that same year.
A year later, he had Benjamin Sesko to thank once more, as he scored 16 goals in another title-winning season. During his time at RB Salzburg, he won 68.82% of his games – 64 wins in total.
But controversially, he was released from Salzburg one day before the start of the 2023-24 season, and was picked up by Saudi League legends, Al-Ahli.
Although he never won the league with them, he won the Saudi Super Cup in 2025, and won back-to-back AFC Champions League Elites in 2024-25 and 2025-26 – as well as Saudi Pro League manager of the month in April 2025.
While in Saudi, he’s been managing football luminaries, such as Ivan Toney and Rihad Mahrez, as well as Franck Kessie.
He picked up another impressive win percentage at Al-Ahli, winning 90 of his 138 games in charge, giving him a 65.22% win rate.
But as he heads to Newcastle, he leaves behind a squad containing Francisco Trincao, Enzo Millot, Galeno, Toney and Brazilian centre-back Roger Ibanez – but will any of these players follow him to Newcastle?