Jim White put a 50p piece in Simon Jordan and just let him go on TalkSPORT yesterday when discussing whether Eddie Howe is under pressure at Newcastle United.
There are times when Simon Jordan makes me roll my eyes so far into the back of my head I access memories long since forgotten, but to give the man his due, he can also speak a lot of sense too.
Tuesday morning saw Jordan speaking a lot of sense when discussing Newcastle United, not something he's usually famed for (although he has done so more than people give him credit for).
While the topic was meant to be about Eddie Howe and whether his position is safe after a tough start to the season, Jordan went on a tangent about how the Premier League are holding them back from doing what they should be allowed to do given other clubs before them have done it.
By that, we of course mean, spend money. Newcastle have the wealthiest backers in the game but still can't compete thanks to Profit and Sustainability rules and restrictions around Associated Party Transactions, which was a rule brought in specifically as a response to the PIF-backed takeover of Newcastle.
"Now we're at a stage where Newcastle cannot do what others have been able to do. And the reasons why they cannot do it is because the rules have been tightened and the consequences of breaches are no longer financial. So they debate that, they'd have gone 'well take a financial consequence', they don't want to take points. They're buying players, what they're investing for is to achieve points, not to have them taken away through the idea of implementation of the proper enforcement or rules as they current situation stands.
"So I feel sorry for them to some extent a little bit. As much as I'd feel sorry for any club that has the right to want to be ambitious. The challenge now is, what does Eddie do? They're 12th in the League aren't they? If they finish 12th in the league at the end of the season I would suggest that Eddie Howe may not be in the job anymore.
"I've always felt, and I really do like Eddie and I do think he's a very good manager and my opinions of him have changed over the last couple of years because it would be silly of me not to have changed them.
"I think ultimately now, I've always believed that he might be a gatekeeper."
A lot of people felt that Eddie Howe was more of an interim manager than the man to take Newcastle forward, and maybe that was the case when he was appointed but after dragging the side out of the relegation zone and just missing out on a top half finish in half a season and then getting the club back into the Champions League in his first full season, things likely changed.
There were many excuses that saved Eddie Howe's job last season when things were going bad. Other clubs would definitely have wielded the axe at the first sign of a struggle but Newcastle have tried to be different and in the end, despite all of the injury issues, Eddie almost got Newcastle into Europe again.
This season, however, the only real excuse he has is the summer upheaval and poor transfer window, the latter of which he is at least partly responsible for. So you'd think that this is the season where results really start to matter, especially now that his guardian angels, Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi are no longer around.
We've heard people say give him to Christmas and if we're out of the Carabao Cup and still in the bottom half of the table he's got to go, and while there's definitely some logic to that, I'd say give him to the end of the season, at least give him the January window. That might seem counter-intuitive as a new manager will want his own players, but you'd expect that a new appointee would be one that is able to work under the sports director model and be more hands off with transfers anyway.
PL | GD | PTS | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 |
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23 | 35 | 56 |
2 |
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24 | 27 | 50 |
3 |
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24 | 13 | 47 |
4 |
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24 | 16 | 43 |
5 |
![]() |
24 | 13 | 41 |
6 |
![]() |
24 | 13 | 41 |
7 |
![]() |
24 | 13 | 40 |
8 |
![]() |
24 | -3 | 37 |
9 |
![]() |
24 | 4 | 36 |
10 |
![]() |
24 | -3 | 34 |
11 |
![]() |
24 | 0 | 31 |
12 |
![]() |
24 | -2 | 30 |
13 |
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24 | -6 | 29 |
14 |
![]() |
24 | 11 | 27 |
15 |
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24 | -17 | 27 |
16 |
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23 | -5 | 26 |
17 |
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24 | -18 | 19 |
18 |
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24 | -28 | 17 |
19 |
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24 | -27 | 16 |
20 |
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24 | -36 | 9 |