Why Newcastle United's Eddie Howe is dream candidate to be next England manager
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There will be a lot of ink spilled today in the service of rightfully praising Gareth Southgate’s legacy, achievements and fundamental decency as a man, but The FA have a more pressing priority than celebrating the greatest England manager in generations – they have to find his successor.
Actually being the next head coach may well be easier than figuring out who they should be. Southgate has detoxified the dressing room, thawed relationships with the media and laid a strategic bedrock of solid, intelligent, possession-based football. Throw in a truly gifted generation of players and no England manager will ever have been blessed with so many advantages heading into their first day in the job. Now The FA have to ensure that they don’t bring in someone who will squander the opportunity.
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Hide AdThey could look at the two best managers in England over the past ten years or so, Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp, but it is probably a year too early to be able to appoint either of them. They could opt for the internal continuity candidate in Lee Carsley, and promotion from the youth squads worked pretty well for Southgate and for Spain, who gave Luis de la Fuente the top job after his work with the Under-21s. They go after Graham Potter, or Mauricio Pochettino, or Russell Martin – but there is one candidate who stands out as having the right mindset and tactical instincts for the job, the right methods and the right feel for a dressing room, and that’s Eddie Howe.
The Newcastle United manager is already among the early favourites for the role. He may not be ‘available’, per se, but seems unlikely to turn the England vacancy down (as Klopp and Guardiola probably would, not that it isn’t worth a phone call) and has just lost a key boardroom ally with the departure of Amanda Staveley. That doesn’t necessarily mean that his job at St. James’ Park is in jeopardy or that he is desperate to leave, but it could contribute to a willingness to consider what was once known as The Impossible Job – but which now looks rather more manageable thanks to Southgate’s eight years in charge.
One of the reasons that I would argue against, say, Potter’s appointment – apart from historical issues with getting a tune out of his forwards, which was an issue for England at Euro 2024 – is that his methods tend to take a while to sink in and he has generally been a slow starter, needing time to inculcate his ideas into his squads. In the world of international management, when coaches only get a week at a time every month or two to get their teams up to speed, his slow burn approach may well not work.
Howe, on the other hand, has generally adopted simpler strategies which take effect more or less instantly – and on paper, his methods should work well with England’s squad despite some likely dovetailing away from Southgate’s slower, deeper, slightly more trepidatious approach.
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Hide AdHowe’s 4-3-3 at Newcastle has been all about staying compact, putting pressure on the ball and looking to get it forward at speed. It’s a style that should get the best out of England’s attacking midfielders and forwards, almost all used to playing in similar systems, pressing in packs and playing quick exchanges to break through the opposing line – and a system that should suit Harry Kane, with aggressive wide forwards once more bursting beyond him as Raheem Sterling once did, giving him the chance to play that ‘quarterback’ role that he made his own.
Howe’s style does come with defensive risks and a high line will occasionally be punished severely, but perhaps less so at the international level than in domestic football. The challenges of keeping players fit enough though long summers dissuades managers from trying an organised high press, as does the difficulty involved in getting the players organised enough with so little group training time. As a result, most international teams are also ill-suited to playing against fast, aggressive teams who condense the field – as Spain (and to a lesser extent Austria) demonstrated at Euro 2024. If you can get a high line and a high press right at that level, it’s a big advantage. Howe would likely try.
Take Howe’s system at Newcastle and you can map England’s squad onto it almost exactly - actually exactly, in the case of Anthony Gordon and Kieran Trippier, although it may be time to usher the latter gently into international retirement. The full-backs, aggressive enough but not asked to get all the way to the byline, perfect for most of England’s crop. The midfield, expected to work hard and run with and off the ball, which is practically a Declan Rice dream, and which should find enough room for Jude Bellingham’s dynamism and the graft and guile of Adam Wharton and Kobbie Mainoo. The fluid attacking line which prioritises pace and directness, a perfect stomping ground for Bukayo Saka and (dare we dream?) a rejuvenated Marcus Rashford.
It would help, too, that he is generally an easy-going and likeable manager who gets players on his side – it’s hard to imagine him blowing all the good work Southgate did in the dressing room apart or reigniting the old battles with the press. That attitudinal change was key to Southgate’s successes, and needs to be carefully nurtured going forward. Appointing a prickly autocrat in the José Mourinho mould would be extremely dangerous – not that many of the names on the likely shortlist have that quality.
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Hide AdThere’s a good argument that what England need to do is appoint a manager who can simply take everything Southgate has done an add the added layer of tactical acuity and strategic detail to a template which has worked very well, and that probably isn’t Howe – but unless Guardiola does answer the phone (you never know…) it’s equally unclear who that man might be. Such managers don’t grow on trees.
And given the crop of plausible candidates, it is likely that there will be some departures from the Southgate Way. High tempo, high pressure football has become integral at club level and unless England do go for an internal hire like Carsley, it’s hard to see a manager who doesn’t bring that tactical baseline with them to some extent – and if that’s the case, then the search needs to be centred on finding a manager who can instil high-impact ideas quickly, who will continue to make the experience of playing for England a joyful one, and who can get the best out of the players England have. And that is Eddie Howe.
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