'Not that daft': Alan Shearer says he expects Eddie Howe to make changes sooner rather than later
Eddie Howe is enduring a difficult start to the 2025/26 campaign, particularly when you look at Newcastle United's Premier League form away from home.
When you take all games in all competitions into account, however, it's not the worst start to a season ever; it's simply that the Magpies are lagging behind in the Premier League.
Whatever it is Eddie Howe is trying to do simply isn't working, especially away from the roaring St James' Park crowd.
This has caused some over-reactive fans to start calling for a change in leadership, but to suggest that Howe is under pressure or fearing for his job is a ludicrous idea, given all of the things he has done for the club in four years.
Alan Shearer says Eddie Howe is not in danger of being sacked yet
Alan Shearer also believes that Howe has banked up enough credit to avoid the sack race for a while yet, but did say on The Rest Is Football podcast that he expects Howe to make changes soon to try and halt the slide.
“We know the rules of football, but surely he’s got so much in the bank.
“What he’s done for Newcastle when others couldn’t do it. When you mention some of the brilliant managers that Newcastle had, then no, not for me, not for a long time.
"I think the board will not panic. They will look at what he’s done in the past and they will look at their Champions League form. They will look at the fact they’re already in the quarter-finals of the Carabao again.
"Yeah, the league has been, particularly away from home, disappointing. And my guess is you might see one or two changes, whether that’s a change of system, whether that’s a change of one or two personnel this weekend, because you can’t keep on going and doing the same thing. And he’s not that daft to do that.
“But no, not for a long time for me, Eddie, because of what he’s achieved at Newcastle.”
If you take a step back, Eddie Howe is still achieving miracles
We're still a long, long way off joining the Howe Out bandwagon. As Shearer said, he's got so much credit in the bank for all the things he has achieved that he's still practically bulletproof.
Our take is that we've been here before, and he's got us out of it and then gone on to achieve great things. We just need to give him the time.
This is a bigger challenge as he has so many new players to integrate; he's had to deal with the fallout of the Alexander Isak saga, not to mention all the boardroom changes again. He's kept the team afloat amid all of this, so we can't really complain too much.
