Eddie Howe has seven games to reassure Newcastle’s hierarchy that he remains the right manager to lead the club into next season.
Newcastle sit 12th in the Premier League and David Hopkinson, the chief executive, has made plain his displeasure at the recent 2-1 home defeat by Sunderland.
“I don’t have a stance on his [Howe’s] future,” Hopkinson said during a media briefing related to the club’s latest set of, largely encouraging, financial results. “What I can tell you is that the derby loss hurt. We take it seriously. There’s nothing within us that thinks: ‘Well, it’s just three points and on we go.’ It has resonated.”
A defeat that dictated Régis Le Bris, Sunderland’s manager, has choreographed a Tyne-Wear double derby triumph this season was dissected during an “intense” lunch meeting between Howe and Hopkinson last week.
“I spent a couple of hours in a one-on-one lunch with Eddie and we talked through a multitude of things including Sunderland,” said Hopkinson, who remains hopeful Howe can secure another European qualification after Newcastle’s recent 8-3 Champions League last-16 aggregate defeat by Barcelona.
“Eddie’s our manager,” he said. “I expect to have a great run to the end of the season and we’ll talk about the future when it’s time. Right now, we’re focused on this season’s competition.”
Given that Hopkinson spoke glowingly of Howe shortly after coming to Newcastle last autumn and compared the former Bournemouth manager to Bruce Springsteen, the change in the mood music seemed striking.
When pressed to clarify whether Howe’s position would be assessed in the summer, Hopkinson said: “I would not frame it that way. We are not looking to make a change at the moment. We are not having those conversations. We are still in the midst of our season.
“We are focused on the seven matches we have remaining and not distracting ourselves with speculation about what we may or may not do in the summer. All of us have only got so much bandwidth and we are focused on finishing this season strongly.”
Howe, who signed a “multi-year” contract extension in 2023, has claimed repeatedly that the sale of Alexander Isak to Liverpool for £125m on transfer deadline day last summer has hindered the team’s progress.
Hopkinson, though, emphasised that Newcastle need to become a “trading” club and said he endorsed offloading the striker at that moment, for that price. “I wasn’t here for the Isak situation,” he said. “But, to me, Isak was a good sale.
“Going forward our strategy is to buy well and sell well. Buying well does not necessarily mean spending the most money. It means working in the market place for the players that generate the most value for this club rather than the fee paid for them.”
Hopkinson played a straight bat when asked whether Newcastle were ready this summer to sell their much-coveted Italy international Sandro Tonali, or one of their other blue-chip players, including Bruno Guimarães, Anthony Gordon and Tino Livramento.
“We are not ready to answer that,” he said. “We can make a box office signing but we might not be able to do that without selling somebody. What I do know is that players that leave this club will need to do so on our terms.”
The intention to trade “smartly” is necessitated by the desire of Newcastle’s majority owner, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, to run the club as a sustainable business and the imperative to remain on the right side of tight Premier League and even stricter Uefa spending rules.
The accounts reveal that the leasehold on St James’ Park has been sold to PZ Holdings Ltd, for £172.1m. PZ Holdings is a subsidiary company controlled, jointly, by PIF and Newcastle’s minority owners, Reuben Brothers. It is understood they have leased the ground back to the club for 50 years in a transaction that resulted in a £129m profit after scrutiny by the Premier League that judged the valuation to be a fair market rate.
Although that deal contributed significantly to the club’s post-tax profit of £34.7m the Newcastle chief financial officer, Simon Capper, played down its significance, suggesting it was partly about administrative and financial housekeeping.
“The motivation was very much to reorganise our property assets and get them into the correct legal boxes to go forward with our potential development, either at St James’ Park or for a new stadium and to facilitate that with financing,” he said.
Significantly, selling the leasehold to another company controlled by the club will permit Newcastle to borrow money through PZ Newco Holdings Ltd without paying exorbitant interest.
Hopkinson feels the club are moving in the right direction after the financial results for the year ended June 2025 revealed record revenues and a 44% increase in commercial income.
Newcastle did not play in European competition during the accounting period but won the Carabao Cup and qualified for the Champions League as turnover rose by £15m to £335.3m.
Newcastle’s turnover remains roughly half that of rivals including Liverpool and Arsenal, but Hopkinson is not deterred. “Our competitors are formidable and they’ve already got a head start on us,” said a chief executive who, in December, said he expected Newcastle to be “in the debate” about the identity of the world’s best clubs by 2030. “But all they’ve got is a head start and we’ve got a tremendous opportunity for growth right in front of us. We’ve got to catch these guys.”
One way to maximise commercial revenue would be to expand St James’ Park or build a new ground but Hopkinson declined to provide an update on stadium plans or details of a potential new training ground.
