- Aug 25, 2011
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To be fair mate when he came in he took them from certain relegation candidates to fighting for the top half of the table.I always thought he'd be an option for us but our fan base would have been outraged if we'd gone for him, plus with similar resources to Ange he's achieved about the same. If he can't get Newcastle to take the next step he won't be doing it with us.
They had a bit of investment with players like Trippier, Burn, Wood and Guimaraes coming in and whilst decent, I wouldn't say that is necessarily a hugely brilliant collection of players to guarantee the upturn they had.
He then got 4th in his second season, and again, I wouldn't say it was a huge turnover of players from poor PL players to exceptional players bar Isak and perhaps Botman.
But nothing like we've seen before where some teams sign 4 or 5 game changers. That wasn't the case for Howe.
Last season, they struggled with injury pile ups and they still have a lot of players I would deem not good enough for a team trying to compete (Almiron, Murphy, etc). They still have to rely on them, yet Howe still has them doing well.
I'd dread to think what would have happened had Newcastle been able to spend more and allow Howe to really drive them forward when it was time to. They lost that momentum though with the rules.