Handed one of the toughest summers of any Premier League manager, Newcastle United head coach Eddie Howe is playing a blinder.
Football management in 2025 isn’t just coaching, tactics, team selection and managing morale.
It increasingly requires elite emotional intelligence to manage upwards and shape a narrative in a sporting world where the message is often manipulated by those providing the latest transfer dopamine hit.
Howe had a dry run at this in 2024, when there was real friction after the club scrambled to meet suffocating financial fair play limits amid boardroom changes that made his life more difficult.
There was dressing room tension then, too, with Anthony Gordon seriously unsettled and whose head wasn’t a million miles away from where Alexander Isak is now.
Howe refocused minds at St James’ Park, pulling the players together to achieve the club’s best season in recent history.
Yet now he faces a whole different set of challenges, with Isak’s future potentially overshadowing the entire 2025-26 campaign.
It has been the talking point of the summer in the north-East but three weeks on from Isak making it clear he was not in the right mental state to board the club jet to Singapore, absolutely no-one can give you a definitive answer on what happens next.
For Howe, threading that needle is almost an impossible job.
He knows Isak’s position is tantamount to going on strike but he needs to protect him to an extent, aware that making him the villain risks alienating a player who could still be with Newcastle on 2 September and could yet lead them to further glory.
There is also the personal responsibility to a young man he has enjoyed working with until now.
But he also needs to come out to bat strongly for the club he has taken to his heart, whose fans feel betrayed by a player who has acted desperately poorly this summer.
Howe is not one for soaring oratory but his message two years ago that Newcastle are “here to compete, not to be liked” has become the club’s unofficial motto.
There is also, perhaps crucially, what all this tells those in the dressing room.
Isak is not the only one with ambitions to win the biggest prizes and Newcastle know there are clubs sniffing around Tino Livramento, Sandro Tonali, Sven Botman and Bruno Guimaraes.
If Howe goes too easily on Isak, what message does it send to them for January or next summer, when agents will be fielding calls?
It would be easy for Howe to do what Alan Pardew did in 2013 when confronted with Yohan Cabaye going on strike after he was denied a move to Arsenal.
Newcastle talked tough, disciplining the midfielder, but effectively pandered to him by telling him he could leave in the January window, which he did.
Howe’s rhetoric is decidedly sharper with Isak and he made a point of saying on Saturday he wanted to work with players who want to be at Newcastle.
That was needed: Isak’s disrespect needs to be challenged, even if the messaging remains fairly subtle.
All of this is a reminder of why, despite the turbulence, Newcastle remain a threat to the established order.
In Howe, they have a manager as good as any in the top six and perhaps at his best when his back is against the wall.
It has not been a good summer by any standard but there is a more upbeat feel to recruitment conversations at the moment.
AC Milan’s Malick Thiaw will be on board by the time Newcastle start the season at Aston Villa on Saturday – a £32m agreement has been struck for the Germany defender, who will have his medical on Monday – and there is hope on striker additions this week.
Yoane Wissa remains restricted by Brentford’s need for further reinforcements, making it doubtful he will be on board anytime soon, even if he desperately wants the move.
Sources stress there are other options they are working on.
They like Porto’s Samu Aghehowa, raw but with a high ceiling, but his price is too lofty for now.
It could be revisited but he wasn’t on initial target lists.
The longer it goes without striker reinforcements, the less chance Isak has of leaving.
The i Paper has been told two boxes need to be checked for Isak to go: Liverpool matching their £150m valuation and “adequate” replacements through the door.
That means two strikers, with Wissa only ever seen as a successor to Callum Wilson.
“Everything is in play,” Howe said after a final pre-season defeat to Atletico Madrid.
“I’ve said many times he is contracted to us. He is our player. The club basically make the decision on his future.
“I don’t know what that will be. Of course I have a preferred outcome. I want the best and strongest squad possible but also I want players that really want to play for this football club.”
Through the uncertainty, Newcastle feel in very safe hands with Howe.
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