When Dan Ashworth sat down with Eddie Howe and Newcastle United’s co-owners Mehrdad Ghodoussi and Amanda Staveley in the summer to set internal targets for the season, they didn’t anticipate the turbo-charged pace of their upward trajectory towards the Champions League places.
Being in the last eight of one of the major cup competitions at the turn of the year, though? That was most definitely on the agenda.
“Winning something, being that person to end that long trophy drought, it is a bit of an obsession for Eddie and the team,” a Newcastle source tells i.
“I think he’s even more driven because it’s now a realistic aim, rather than something so unrealistic the owner feels fairly safe offering them all a £20m bonus if they do win a cup.”
That figure, infamously, was the amount offered by former custodian Mike Ashley to the squad in 2017 if they won the FA Cup. With a sub-par squad preoccupied by Premier League survival and a city divided, it was never a realistic proposition.
These days the sands have shifted. The owners crave tangible success and pushing into the later stages of the League Cup wouldn’t be seen as mission accomplished. Everyone at Newcastle wants to win it and believes they can.
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It is a familiar theme in team meetings this season, Howe having delivered a history lesson to his players on more than one occasion. Newcastle, in case anyone outside Tyneside needed reminding, have not won a domestic trophy since 1955 and their last major cup win was a Fairs Cup win in 1969. That competition no longer even exists. They have never won the League Cup and have only reached the final once, way in 1976.
Those facts left some of the newer arrivals, only versed in a newly minted Newcastle laden with ambition, in shock. The core of homegrown players, led by Dan Burn and Sean Longstaff, have supplemented that message with the emotional significance of what winning something would mean to the city.
“I said to the lads if you win anything here you’ll be like gods,” he told i back in November. “It’s a long time since we won anything and it has to change.”
It is why the League Cup, so often derided by Premier League clubs, has seen consecutive sell-outs at St James’ Park and why many see this match as the most important of the season so far. This is a competition they believe they can win.
“It is why I came to Newcastle,” Kieran Trippier told i a couple of weeks ago. “The manager speaks about it (winning something) a lot. We believe we can produce something special this season.”
Saturday’s shock defeat at Sheffield Wednesday injected a note of caution into a season that has so far gone so smoothly. It felt like a flashback to the Ashley era, dumped out of the FA Cup by lower league opposition on a day when the limitations of the squad below the first XI were laid bare.
Criticism on Tyneside has been muted. Win tonight and all will be forgiven and forgotten by a supporter base who crave victory against Leicester.
“The home quarter-final is the biggest game at St James’ Park in years,” explains Alex Hurst, former chairman of the Newcastle United Supporters Trust and editor of long-running fanzine True Faith.
“Every single Newcastle fan I know wants a ticket, and probably tens thousands won’t be there who’s want to be.
“Even before thinking of a final the idea of a home cup semi-final is tantalising and something we’ve experienced only once in many decades (Marseille in the Uefa Cup in 2004).
“There’s no shared cup experience within this support, no great days and better stories to tell about cup finals or even semi-finals. There’s something about a city emptying and heading 300 miles south that unifies people and supporters and we haven’t had that since Cardiff nearly 20 years ago.
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For once, that sentiment is shared in the boardroom at St James’ Park, where there is a lively debate about whether to stick or twist in the January transfer window.
Howe believes pushing the boat out to seize a golden opportunity to make the Champions League is the way forward. Others are more cautious, aware Financial Fair Play is a trap waiting for them. Money spent now will be deducted from a summer budget, when there will be no January premium and better calibre of players available.
They are searching for a top class defensive midfield, and Youri Tielemans, of Tuesday night’s opponents, is one option. James Maddison, who will miss this tie, is another.
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