At Newcastle United‘s training ground on the outskirts of the city centre, men in hard hats and hi-vis jackets mingle with the growing number of Eddie Howe‘s support staff.
A multi-million pound upgrade to facilities that one club insider acknowledged fairly recently are “low end Championship” was given the green light six months ago and the players recently moved into the expanded dressing rooms.
A state-of-the-art hydrotherapy centre opens in a few weeks and finally, the diggers will move on before the end of the season as work begins on sourcing a site to build an entirely new training ground in the coming years.
The sense is of a club building something much bigger, but there is another bit of symbolism at play: Newcastle’s meteoric rise has arrived at such a pace that the club has been unable to properly lay all the foundations for the journey they’re embarking on. They remain a work in progress, tantalisingly for those on Tyneside there is plenty more to come from owners with the deepest of pockets.
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Saturday’s 0-0 draw at Crystal Palace saw them draw their third blank in four league games. They are brilliantly tough to beat but are encountering creativity issues ahead of their biggest game of the season.
Plenty of excuses, then, to play down expectations ahead of a League Cup trip to Southampton and their first semi-final in 18 years if Howe was so inclined. Not a bit of it.
“The semi-final isn’t enough – it’s not enough for anybody,” he said on Monday.
“To say you reached the semi means nothing. You want to go one step further and I know the players feel the same way.
“My coaching team feel passionately about it. We want to make final and are desperate to change things.”
Given that it is just 367 days since a bottom-of-the-table Newcastle dug in at Elland Road to scrap for a transformative 1-0 win that turned their season around, it has been some improvement. Howe, however, bristled when asked if reaching the last four of the League Cup was an “achievement”.
“It’s a dangerous thing to answer that because a ‘yes’ sets maybe a dangerous ceiling of where we are at mentally. We are proud to be where we are but we want more,” he said.
“All season, the players have shown that mentality themselves. They have never settled for or been pleased with anything but winning so that is a really healthy place to be.”
The excitement around the city will build to a crescendo in seven days’ time when Southampton arrive for the reverse leg. Howe insisted that his team would do more than simply try to avoid defeat and would be able to handle the pressure that often emanates from that craving for success.
“They know the size of the club they are playing for,” he said.
“They know the want and desire around the city for everyone to be successful so I don’t think I need to remind them of that and, certainly, in my conversations with them, they understand the responsibilities they have when playing here.
“You want the players to play the game their normal way so it’s a balance between how much you build it up to how much you just let them be normal.”
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“The club are trying and that is where we are,” he said. “There is no positive news to give you but certainly there is a lot of work going on.”
He offered no comment about Anthony Gordon, a player Newcastle like and believe can be prised from crisis-hit Everton, where he has agreed contract terms but is yet to sign a new deal. The Magpies want to do business in the next week and would be foolish not to, but the message from St James’ Park is consistent: it has to be the right business.
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