Eddie Howe hung out to dry - but he must do more to silence sack calls

Eddie Howe has, categorically, been let down by those above him. Whatever the narrative surrounding the failures in the summer market- it goes beyond that, there has been no first team signing in 18 months. Couple that with having no high-quality academy players to call on because of criminal underinvestment by the previous regime – it has in “some” ways crippled the gaffer and his ability to affect football matches.

Teams have blown past us with their player trading and recruitment, and it looks much worse than it is because of our bottom half league position. Eddie deserves the time to turn things around despite the prolonged nature of the decline in performances precisely because the board have let him down so spectacularly.

Eddie is also being let down by his players: despite scoring Isak committed one of the worst sins on a football pitch by being greedy when he should’ve squared for a tap into an empty net; Joelinton has got his new contract and has regressed; Barnes is an anonymous waste of £38m (should’ve been spent on a RW); Almiron and Murphy are still expected to play and contribute on the right; Schar is aging poorly; Dan Burn’s lack of pace is killing us; and Pope looks like Bambi on ice in rollerblades with the ball at his feet. They can all turn things around but so many are underperforming in the same team right now.

We’ve all seen with our own eyes that short-termism doesn’t really work in football - but it is a results-based business, and results do have to pick up ASAP.

With that in mind, the same mistakes, the same patterns of play, the same substitutions and the same giant hole in midfield/the same lack of midfield balance are starting to repeat themselves like a bad curry on a Saturday night leaving you with the runs. And the manager must accept responsibility for these things.

Tonali must have it written in his contract that he can only play 90 minutes for Italy. Typical Newcastle luck, Gordon signs a new contract and gets injured immediately. All these things are seemingly compounded by the managers stubbornness to change his tactics to compensate for the squad’s short comings.

Add in his wild comments after the game that he thought it was a high-level game between two quality teams and that we were unlucky – I found myself hoping he was just fronting up and covering for his players. We all know plenty of previous managers that would’ve got stick for saying something like that. For me, this was one of Eddie’s worst outings as United manager.