The bombshell admission that made Newcastle’s stars want to leave – and why Eddie Howe can still save his dream, writes CRAIG HOPE

January 11, 2024 A gloomy and wet Thursday. The day dreams became reality Newcastle United. The music didn’t die, but the record changed.

“Every player has a price,” screamed the headlines, and the horror was felt as much in the dressing room as it was on the terraces. The mood is not the same from St James’ Park.

Senior players were “disappointed” by chief executive Darren Eales’ admission that if the money was right, every one of them could be sold. Eales, on reflection, was honest. It was intended to cushion the landing in the summer race to sell stars and so avoid a points deduction that the club privately knew was on the way.

But it wasn’t meant to be, or so we thought. The hierarchical statements of ambition, Champions League football and club record signings would have us believe otherwise. It was a ride in the fast lane and no one was wearing a seat belt. So when Eales pulled the handbrake, it hurt.

Out of nowhere, Newcastle were a selling club again. Spending gave way to spending and in two transfer windows since then they haven’t bought a single first-team starter. why the Profit and Sustainability Rules were offered as a reason on that fateful January afternoon when Eales addressed reporters from the boardroom.

PSR is one factor – a very big one – but there is also a downside for the club to sell the right players at the right time, as well as generate more sponsorship and commercial income. There’s no training ground or training kit partner yet, for example.

Whatever the cause, the effect has been to destabilize squad morale and cast doubt on the speed and direction of the project, at least in the short term. A player’s career is precious and fleeting and up to half a dozen now see their future away from Tyneside if personal ambitions are to be achieved.

The summer ouster of co-owners Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Godusi robbed the dressing room of its comfort blanket and connection to the hierarchy until parts of the squad took kindly to the introductory gambits of new sporting director Paul Mitchell.

They were also unimpressed with the traveling conditions and route during a week-long postseason trip to Australia. To them it felt like a lack of care, especially when Tottenham went in and out for a game with a luxury liner. The subsequent pre-season camp in Japan was described by some as “too hot, a waste of time”.

And it also didn’t help that communication from the top has gone quiet in recent months – the players think that speaks volumes. All this undermines the threads of a staff that seemed so indestructibly woven.

That’s reality, suspended until this year by the fever dream of a Saudi takeover, Eddie Howe’s magic, Alexander Isak’s goals, a Carabao Cup final, a Paris Saint-Germain thrashing, glamorous documentaries and £450m invested in new players .

Newcastle were shooting for the moon and loading the rocket further fueled talk of a new stadium and training ground. Today, those developments seem light years away, at least in the context of the current team’s life. As Kevin Keegan once said, “It didn’t look like it did in the brochure.”

The likes of Isaac, Anthony Gordon and Bruno Guimaraes will almost certainly never play in a new stadium or a revamped St James’ or kick a ball on a new training pitch. They already know it.

Last month we revealed that the current training facility would be expanded again, but it is still woefully below standard compared to their rivals. As one observer quipped, “It’s starting to feel like Legoland!”

Howe deals with the aftermath of it all. If the confidence and sense of being part of an era-defining adventure can inspire a band to be greater than the sum of its parts, the opposite is true when you realize it wasn’t a pot of gold on the horizon, but a mirage. That is what we are seeing at Newcastle this season.

Well-informed sources are convinced that the players are still giving everything they did before, and the method and means remain the same as those on which the success of recent seasons has been built. There was no erosion of faith in each other or in the manager. But when marginal gains move toward marginal losses, the difference in outcomes is huge.

It was Howe who used the word “stagnant” in response to my question last week, which showed him that he and the squad needed and owed some help from the club in the form of new faces. It was a big word to perform in the room – he did it twice – but it absolutely lies at the heart of the problems that see this talented team with England’s best manager stuck in 12th position.

It’s no big surprise that they look like Newcastle storming into the Premier League when they come up against the bigger teams when the occasion calls for a performance. At St James’s this season they have beaten Tottenham, Chelsea and Arsenal and drawn with Manchester City and Liverpool. They lost to Brighton and West Ham.

During a recent podcast with Mail Sport columnist Simon Jordan, Howe said: “There was a desire to make history, to change the fortunes of the club forever. It really drove the players. It was an amazing time. We surprised ourselves with what we were doing. The players performed above the level at which they were capable of playing.

He was actually talking about Bournemouth. Yet his words rang so true of motivation during his first two years on Tyneside. But as Alan Shearer said this week: “the adrenaline rush gave way to a hangover”.

Howe was talking specifically about Newcastle when I asked him on Friday what impact all of the above had on his group. He paused and gave an insightful answer.

“Players are very astute human beings,” he began. “I always say that the players feel everything at the football club. They are the most insightful people because they are on the front lines. They are the ones who deliver for us. So whatever happens in the club, they are the ones who absorb it.

And what about Howe and his future? He is the right manager, but he has to navigate what increasingly feels like the wrong time, no matter who is in charge. Change it and you won’t change the PSR situation or the concerns of some players. He must have the support of those above him.

But for all the mitigation outlined here, there will be very little excuse if Newcastle is packed before Christmas next week. It’s Leicester at home on Saturday, followed by Brentford in the Carabao Cup quarter-final on Wednesday and then a trip to Ipswich – without a home win this season – next Saturday. Three winning games. Three games that must be won if there is any hope of replacing the fear heading into the festivities.

It’s been a rough week though. The 4-2 defeat at Brentford saw Shearer question the squad’s attitude and, as revealed by Mail Sport, there were injuries to goalkeeper Nick Pope and striker Callum Wilson, who were sidelined for one and two months respectively. Everything feels like a snowball rolling down.

That’s why Howe and his players need to stop the negative momentum this week, pick themselves up and start throwing some snowballs of their own. They still need to be good enough to challenge for a European place and a domestic cup, and that would make history after 56 years without silverware.

The dream isn’t dead, it’s just not as dreamy as it was once made out to be, at least not yet.