Eddie Howe is staying at Newcastle - but he must adapt to survive for much longer

There are few Premier League teams whose owners would take going from top four contenders to the bottom half of the table without sacking the manager. Newcastle, it would seem, are such a team. After what Eddie Howe described as “difficult” face-to-face talks with the board, it appears that he will survive to serve a sixth season in his post.

Even if it’s a pleasant surprise to see a club showing patience and loyalty in this day and age, Howe will still be conscious of the undeniable fact that the 2025/26 season has been a minor disaster on Tyneside. Barring an improbable string of results, Newcastle will miss out on European football and may well finish below newly-promoted rivals Sunderland. Given their ambition and resources, it’s been a rough year.

In deciding to stand by Howe, the club’s owners are also standing by his principles and methods, despite evidence that they may be showing signs of wear and tear as the Premier League evolves. So where has Newcastle’s season come unstuck, how much of the blame can be laid at Howe’s feet – and where does he go from here?

Why Eddie Howe needs to change his tactics to get Newcastle back on track

A part of the challenge which faces Howe is the reality that the changing tactical ‘metagame’ of the Premier League has left the ideology with which he achieved his early success at Newcastle in the dust. The age of high presses, high defensive lines and compact pitches is being left behind, and Howe hasn’t yet worked out how to adapt.

As the league adjusted to the ultra-proactive pressing and condensed fields that defined the last decade, teams focussed on training their defenders to be press resistant and countered high lines by becoming more direct with their passing, looking to exploit the space left in behind by overly aggressive defences. That’s forced teams – including Newcastle – to gradually drop their defences deeper and deeper, expanding the field of play.

That’s an issue for Newcastle’s combative midfield, which was based around the concept of playing three box-to-box men alongside each other. When defensive lines were able to push up, it greatly reduced the volume of ground that they had to cover. Now, with considerably more space between defence and attack, they are forced to run harder, further, and to burn more energy, all while the task of linking up the back four and the attack becomes more difficult.

Bruno Guimarães, Joelinton and Sandro Tonali have to run further when they need to track back, dribble further when they want to burst forward, and are more isolated from the central striker, making it harder to pick penetrative passes. The wing-backs help, but they too have a workload that has increased in both difficulty and intensity.

Newcastle aren’t the only side to have struggled to make the tweaks required by the Premier League’s shifting strategic paradigm. Much of Ruben Amorim’s failure at Manchester United can be explained in a similar way – Amorim, like Howe, wanted a box-to-box midfield that energetically bridged the gap between defence and the front line, but far too much was asked of them with so much space to cover.

At Newcastle, the third man in midfield has ameliorated the problem to a certain degree, but the combination of a larger pitch and the width with which Howe likes Newcastle to play has also left the forwards increasingly isolated from their team-mates – a situation which wasn’t helped by a disastrous summer transfer window in which their attempts to find a new striker hit the rocks as rival teams beat them to their preferred targets, all while the Alexander Isak saga created ceaseless, needless uncertainty.

Neither Nick Woltemade nor Yoane Wissa, the eventual arrivals, were well-suited to the rather lonely role they were asked to fill. Woltemade’s best football has come as a supporting striker rather than a number nine, while Wissa impressed at Brentford partly because he had wingers and a number 10 in close contact. Neither are especially adept at creating their own space or chances or at the grunt work of leading the line alone.

Individual performances and questionable recruitment have been problems elsewhere, too. Newcastle have been short of required depth out wide, both on the wings and at wing-back, and while the emergence of the dynamic Lewis Miley has helped out in midfield, that has been counterbalanced by Joelinton’s decline and an extra body in the centre of the park could have made a big difference over a long season.

Howe can be accused of failing to keep up with the prevailing tactical trends of the top flight, but the mistakes made in the transfer market aren’t his fault and he is only partially liable if those mistakes hit doubly hard when players already on the books lose form. The failures of Woltemade and Wissa were arguably foreseeable – but Howe can’t necessarily have been expected to see Joelinton’s difficult season coming, for instance.

Howe is not solely culpable for a desperately disappointing campaign but if his core methods, centred around high pressing and high-octane midfield play, no longer function as intended in the modern Premier League, what can he do to adapt?

Newcastle’s transfer window will dictate what changes Howe needs to make

One of the problems facing Newcastle this summer is that they don’t have the financial power to mount a full rebuild in the same way that a side like Manchester United or Liverpool could. The Premier League’s spending rules are changing in the off-season, but they will still force the Magpies to circumspect - relative to the top flight’s wealthiest sides, at least.

That means that simply dismissing the deals which brought Woltemade and Wissa to the club as bad jobs and buying replacements isn’t necessarily an option, especially when there is a pressing need for warm bodies in defence, midfield, and an appetite for a new goalkeeper, perhaps James Trafford.

That is, technically, not Howe’s problem as recruitment is not within his purview. But the fact that the squad is unlikely to be given a complete facelift also dictates that he find new solutions which work with much the same resources that he already has access to. Without a major overhaul, he may be compelled to evolve his tactics in a gradual, holistic manner.

Perhaps the most straightforward way to do that is to go from a gung-ho all box-to-box approach in midfield to a staggered system, whether that means a double pivot with a traditional number 10 ahead of them or a single pivot with one man covering the deeper portion of the pitch and two taking up more advanced roles. There are many ways to skin this particular cat, but it’s plain that Newcastle cannot persist with their current system.

Finally signing a traditional attacking midfielder seems like the most obvious route to go down. Not only would a playmaker who can bridge the gap between midfield and attack reduce the workload on the midfielders, but it would give the strikers somebody to link up with – something that both Woltemade and Wissa sorely need.

Wissa, as it stands, looks likely to leave with reports suggesting that Newcastle are exploring their options in the summer transfer market, but Woltemade will probably stay and needs to be given a close connection with a fellow forward to thrive. Howe has never really had a true number 10 at Newcastle. Perhaps it’s time.

Bayern Munich’s alleged interest in Anthony Gordon could necessitate changes, too. Should Gordon leave, then the opportunity to reimagine the wings present itself – perhaps they can get a little narrower and sign technicians who are comfortable coming inside to support the striker. Perhaps they can sign players who play closer to the midfield and attack the channels from deeper areas. There are plenty of options for Howe, even if there are limitations on how they can rebuild the squad which will be tasked with putting his tactics into practice.

Perhaps the only thing which is certain is that Howe can’t head into the 2026/27 season without making changes to his ideas and expect his side to succeed. He has to adapt, and he has to hope the recruitment team do a better job of finding players who support his strategic vision. Both Howe and their work in the transfer market need to take their share of the blame for a disappointing campaign – and that means that both need to reassess how they adjust to take the club forward. If either fail, or stubbornly stick to their guns in the face of their mistakes, then the road back towards the Champions League may prove to be a long one.