Mark Douglas has been speaking on the Everything is Black and White podcast about what players can expect from Eddie Howe during training sessions.
For the players who have not jetted off away on international duty, they will get the chance to meet their new manager, who arrived at their Benton training ground at 6.55am on Tuesday morning. After joining, Howe admitted he was ‘eager to get onto the training ground to start working with the players’.
Will Howe succeed at Newcastle?
Yes!
No!
Howe has been out of the game since he was relegated with Bournemouth in the summer of 2020, and in the time since, he was linked with replacing Neil Lennon at Celtic, although that never materialised.
Now, he begins his tenure on Tyneside with an international break to get his methods across and he will do this in a different way to previous manager Steve Bruce, according to Douglas.
He said: “I think tactics is definitely something that you’ll see a little bit, that they will be different. From what I’ve heard, I think they’ll have a go at some of the bigger clubs, you know, they won’t be quite as passive as they were against some of the big clubs under Bruce, and let’s be honest, Rafa Benitez as well.
“That might depend on the kind of players he’s got, and obviously, after January, you’d hope that he’ll have a better calibre of player, but in the meantime, I think you can expect a lot of work on the training ground.
“It’ll be a bit of a culture shock for the players, I think they’ll work an awful lot harder under Howe than they did under Bruce. I think there’ll be fewer days off, I think there’ll be harder sessions – we’ll see how that works.”
TIF Thoughts on Howe at Newcastle…
According to The Telegraph, Howe had impressed the owners during interviews and despite having pursued number-one target Unai Emery, who rejected the Magpies. So there should be no worry on Tyneside about Howe not being up to the task as he reportedly went into great detail on how to change the club’s fortunes around and what he would do with the current squad.
Howe has an incredibly important run of fixtures to kickstart his tenure at St. James’ Park, as he faces Brentford, Burnley and Norwich City within their next four fixtures and then after that, there are just five games until the January transfer window opens, which is when the owners may look to flex their financial muscles and bring in new players to help Howe guide the club away from the drop zone.
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