He certainly was. Emery, Favre, Fonseca, Conte, Zidane, Rafa, Mourinho, Gerrard, Lampard, Rangnick, Martinez were all approached. It was only after the vast majority of them turned the approach down that they turned to Howe.
We have it on good authority that Newcastle is closer to Bournemouth than Burnley. That's a well known fact.
I disagree. Howe was approached at the same time as the ones you've mentioned. Yes, some turned us down and some we didn't offer to.
T. Approaching is not offering it's simply enquiring. I believe most of the time a Club will approach a number of potential managers and then see who is interested and who isn't and then take it from there.
So as it’s Howe. Who is in the yes team and happy. Who is in the no team and it’s underwhelming. And who is in the middle.
I'm in the yes team, I think he's a good manager and has clearly thought about how to get this squad playing some football. He wanted the job, he wanted the challenge and he's a young hungry manager. That's all I wanted, irrespective of a new ownership. Excited for the games.
He's emphasised to the owners that the current squad is simply being used wrong, I agree with him. We have our best players either in the wrong positions or simply on the bench, if he comes in fresh ideas, tactically astute, gets a few wins we will look like a completely different squad. Hope it works.
I'm in the Yes camp but just only. He's proven that he's a good young manager, he's been out of the job for about 18 months so he's likely to be very hungry to get back in with the right opportunity which he clearly sees this as. I'm sure he'll be doing absolutely everything in his power to make this a success and to further develop himself as a manager and build himself a reputation of being able to handle a bigger challenge. If it doesn't work out it doesn't work out....I can't see how he could leave us in a worse state than we are now! If we go down (and I don't think we will) then he's not 100% culpable in my opinion despite have nearly 3/4 of the season still to go...as I said last night, I'm quietly excited...it's a fresh start and a blank canvas for the players to prove themselves worth of the shirt, some of whom we know are just not up to it but others with a bit of tweaking and some better players around them coming in etc etc may turn out to be reasonable squad players.
I'm in the middle. I think he's massively overrated because he's British. I think he's nothing more than a stop gap and I hope we can avoid relegation. As I said before I think he's a sidestep.
That simply doesn't make sense as we just sacked Steve Bruce. How in any way is Eddie a sidestep from Steve Bruce, apart from you just don't like him.