Emotional letter sent to Eddie Howe as Alan Shearer releases must-read tribute

If there’s one thing you must read today following last night’s celebrations at St James’ Park, it’s Alan Shearer’s latest piece for The Athletic.

Our former No 9 and club legend has sent an emotional letter to Eddie Howe, sending his thanks to the Newcastle United boss who has brought Champions League football back to Tyneside for the first time in 20 years.

It’s a brilliant read and really tugs on the heartstrings, capturing why the former Bournemouth boss is so adored by fans and the driving force behind what’s been a truly unforgettable season. He’s not just united a city, he’s inspired his squad and lead us impeccably all year.

Without further ado, here’s Shearer’s letter to Eddie in full:

Dear Eddie,

Thank you.

Thank you for the top four, for the Champions League, for this season of discovery and self-discovery, for the wonder of winning and its piercing noise. Thank you for the primal rage of St James’ Park.

Thank you for giving us the month of May and a flutter of tension, a feeling which is familiar and a reason that is not, to be the hunters not the hunted.

Thank you for this heartbeat.

Thank you for this version of Newcastle United, one which plays angry and plays loud, which runs and keeps running until lungs explode and legs collapse and then runs on empty until there is nowhere left to run. Thank you for this regal fury.

Thank you for allowing us to reclaim our streets; people smiling, restaurants buzzing, bars buzzing, an entire city a beehive of buzzing, connected to the club again, one and indivisible, alive and awash with happiness.

After all those sour years of being patronised or ignored, of people failing to appreciate why things were so ****, of being told we expected too much or demanded too much or felt too much, thank you for reminding us not to give a ****.

Thank you for tapping into a part of our personality, as a club and a place, we had half-forgotten. You are not Kevin Keegan or Sir Bobby Robson, you are solid and less flamboyant, but when I interviewed you in September and you said “I’m not here to just exist”,  it struck me like a fist. So much of our identity as a region is about isolation, being cast aside or left to rot and we either accept it or we fight. Thank you for the fight.

Thank you for coming here and getting us. Thank you for bothering. In spite of some witless commentary over the decades, Newcastle has never been wedded to kamikaze football or Hollywood signings or distrustful of outsiders. The most fundamental aspects of Newcastle have always been our openness, our industry. Embrace us like we embrace life, like we embrace you, and we never let go.

You are a man of Bournemouth. You are a man of Newcastle. Thank you, for being one of us.

Thank you for letting me walk into work with a swagger, free of dread. Thank you for letting me take the p*** rather than having the p*** ripped from me. Thank you for making the professional part of my life a pleasure, knowing I’ll have goals to drool over, blocks to boast about, pressing to admire.

Thank you for letting us release our anxiety, for making other teams shrivel from us. Thank you for letting us travel the country, not with hope but with belief, the certain knowledge that our players will give everything, chase everything, scrap for everything.

Thank you for making us clever as well as good, street-smart warriors who can manage a game and see it out. Sam Allardyce was spot on when he called out all that b******* and said everybody does it, all the big teams, as if Pep Guardiola’s magnificent Manchester City don’t know how to clip an opponent’s heels when it suits them.

Having said that, thank you for the s***housing because it’s ******* brilliant and it’s ******* hilarious.

Thank you for forging this fine team. As I write to you, I can picture the response from elsewhere — “calm down, you’ve not won anything” — but those people don’t appreciate how little we’ve had to cheer and how novel it feels to see your lads put a shift in, enhancing each other. They are a team in the purest sense, greater than the sum of their parts, all in it together.

Some will go, others will replace them, but thank you for building the class of 2022-23 and the memories they will leave, a special, grounded group who, for one more match, are bonded together, welded together, who have lifted Newcastle towards the elite.

The easy thing, the lazy thing, is to say you’ve splurged a fortune, but not compared to plenty of others and what you’ve actually done is take a club at its lowest ebb, bottom of the Premier League, and offered balance to years of under-spending or misspending. Thank you for buying well and sensibly, for making your foundation a core of character.

Thank you for not going down that well-trodden route of instant gratification. Thank you for giving us Bruno Guimaraes, Sven Botman and Alexander Isak, quality players we were intrigued by but who were hardly household names. Thank you for those gorgeous shimmies and soft, weighted touches and a promise of the Newcastle to come…

Thank you for bringing Dan Burn home to us, for letting him be us and represent us, game in, week out, for the drive and delight of realising his boyhood dream, from watching the Champions League as a kid to taking us there.

Thank you for your skill at resurrection, for yanking back players we had half-pushed out the door. Thank you for Joelinton, a joke centre-forward but the most serious, substantive midfielder you could imagine, a beast, a presence, as hard as they come, launching into everything.

Thank you for the conversation I had the other day when I turned to a mate and said: “You know, we’re just not the same team without Sean Longstaff,” and then catching myself as I said it, an unimaginable sentence a couple of years ago and a forgotten footballer, now integral to everything good about Newcastle. Thank you for Fabian Schar, for Jacob Murphy, for Miguel Almiron and colossal improvement.

Thank you for Kieran Trippier, the first piece of your jigsaw and still the most vital, for his brilliant delivery and his brilliant leadership. He was the big one, an England international, a winner of La Liga, who saw what might lie beyond the muddy wasteland of a relegation battle. He was the message, the signature signing, the statement and he has been a proper, proper, ******* captain all season.

Thank you for this miserly defence and this expansive forward line, for Nick Pope’s saves and Callum Wilson’s goals. Thank you for — and to — all of them.

Thank you for our lost weekend in London, for that drunken karaoke in Trafalgar Square. If the Carabao Cup final didn’t go the way we wanted, the way we planned — catching us just as we dipped — then thank you for encouraging us to dream again, to yearn again, to have that bittersweet pain of a near miss.

Thank you for letting us have our history. Thank you for inviting me to the training ground in the days before Wembley, when I spoke to your squad and told them they’d already made us proud. Thank you for doing the same with other old players, for making us feel part of one unbroken chain — a chain that had snapped under the previous ownership — the same stretch of grass, the same stadium, the same club, the same urge to be there and share in it.

All of us, United.

Thank you for this beginning.

“(I’ve) got that fear of tomorrow,” you said in our interview, but If I can ask one thing of you, Eddie, just one more thing, it’s this: let tomorrow go to hell, just this once. Look up and look around, see what you’ve unleashed and drink it in.

Thank you for making home feel like home again.

Best wishes,

Alan.

About Olly Hawkins

As a Junior Magpie since birth and season ticket holder, I eat, sleep and breathe all things NUFC! Here at the blog, I aim to bring you news, views, match reports and transfer exclusives as and when I get them.

5 thoughts on “Emotional letter sent to Eddie Howe as Alan Shearer releases must-read tribute

  1. I want to say thank you Alan for making me feel both ashamed and proud. I used to go to as many games as possible, even in my school uniform following a hockey match. I never felt, or was made to feel, that I was just a giggly girl. Myself and one of my besties Ann Hemy who introduced me to the lads. She is still a staunch supporter. My favourite at that time was the monster John McGrath.
    Then in the 70’s my hubby and I went to a match. It was terrifying. In the corners of the Leases gangs of kids were bating each other and making fires.
    We left, never to return.
    We moved down south and but couldn’t erase those memories.
    As fate would have it, my old bestie, Ann Hemy, came back into my life, and even though we still lives hundreds of miles away, she, and you Alan, have reignited the flames. I add my respect for Eddie Howe to thousands of faithful fans.
    Thank you
    xxx

      (Quote)

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