Eddie Howe will ‘stand up’ for Newcastle United’s transfer record – but the Magpies boss stressed the ‘most important thing’ is how he works with sporting director Paul Mitchell moving forward.
Mitchell openly questioned whether Newcastle’s recruitment processes were ‘fit for purpose’ and whether some of the players the club had signed before his arrival last summer ‘potentially cost more money than they should have done in the market’. Howe, in response, said he was ‘very proud of the body of work that we did’.
Mitchell made light of the commentary on the pair’s relationship last week, likening it to an episode of Big Brother, and the sporting director quipped he ‘can’t hold hands with Eddie as much I’d like to’. Mitchell went on to hail Howe as an ‘elite professional’ and said it was his job to support him.
Rather than dwell on the past, Howe insisted ‘the most important’ thing was how the pair worked together in the future as they look to strengthen the side.
“It’s got to be teamwork, it’s got to be collaboration, and I know Paul feels the same way,” Howe told Up Front. “There was a lot of noise in the summer and I understand it’s the media’s job to blow everything up to make stories. The reality is, internally, it wasn’t like that. We’re forming a new relationship.
“I’m not going to shy away from the fact that I will protect or stand up for our transfer business. I think it’s been really good. Excellent recruitment. I love the players we got.
“It’s really difficult for me to comment on what Paul meant – only he can articulate that to you – but the most important thing is how we work going forward and the decisions we make in the future.”
The pair’s first summer window together was, of course, dominated by the pursuit of Marc Guehi. Although Newcastle continued to hold discussions with Crystal Palace, the Magpies stopped bidding for Guehi weeks before the close of business after feeling that the Eagles’ demands were beyond the club’s limits and beyond what they should be paying for a player who had less than two years left on his contract at the time.
Mitchell, who found it ‘difficult coming into a pre-defined strategy’, after being appointed on July 4, made it clear that the club had to ‘draw a line in the sand’ to say that they were not going to overpay in a PSR world where each signing has a knock-on effect on future windows. However, Guehi was not the only ‘difference maker’ Newcastle attempted to bring in during the course of the window and the black-and-whites made a play for, among others, Michael Olise before the forward joined Bayern Munich.
“He [Guehi] wasn’t the only target,” Howe added. “A lot goes into a summer. You never just have one target. That wouldn’t be right.
“We went into the summer with several targets. We tried to sign two or three other players. We didn’t get them. We ended up, ultimately, towards the end of the window with one target and we didn’t get him so that was it.”
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