Eddie Howe Steps Down as Newcastle United Coach
Eddie Howe is set to step down as Newcastle United head coach, ending a transformative five-year spell on Tyneside and opening the door to a bold new appointment in the dugout.
According to The Athletic, Howe has told the club’s hierarchy he wants to take a break from football, reversing his initial decision to stay on after the end of last season. The parting is described as amicable. No sacking, no public fallout – just a manager who has decided he needs to step away.
Newcastle, though, have not been caught cold.
Jaissle lined up as successor
The club are in advanced talks to bring in Al Ahli head coach Matthias Jaissle as Howe’s replacement at St James’ Park. The 38-year-old German has emerged as the clear frontrunner, helped by his strong relationship with Newcastle’s majority owners, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), who also control Al Ahli.
Jaissle’s coaching CV fits the profile of a modern, front-foot appointment. At Red Bull Salzburg he built a reputation for aggressive, high-intensity attacking football, winning back-to-back Austrian Bundesliga titles and the Austrian Cup. That success earned him the move to Al Ahli in 2023.
The step into Saudi football has only strengthened his standing. Jaissle has guided Al Ahli to consecutive AFC Champions League titles in 2025 and 2026, underlining his ability to manage expectation, navigate knockout pressure and mould a side capable of sustaining success on multiple fronts.
If, as expected, he takes over on Tyneside, he will inherit a club that has tasted the Champions League, lifted a long-awaited trophy, but now finds itself at a crossroads.
Howe’s legacy: from relegation fight to silverware
Howe arrived in November 2021 with Newcastle marooned in 19th place in the Premier League and drifting. Under intense scrutiny after the PIF takeover, he steadied the ship quickly, dragged the side clear of danger and re-established St James’ Park as a hostile, energised arena for visiting teams.
The surge did not stop at survival. The 2022-23 campaign delivered something that had felt distant for a generation: Champions League qualification. Newcastle muscled their way into the top four, playing with an intensity and unity that mirrored Howe’s touchline persona.
His defining moment came in 2025. Under the Wembley arch, Newcastle beat Liverpool to win the Carabao Cup, ending a 70-year wait for a major trophy. For a club weighed down by near-misses and frustration, Howe was the man who finally put silverware back in the cabinet.
Yet the upward curve did not last.
The 2025-26 season turned bruising. Newcastle slipped to 12th in the Premier League, losing momentum and consistency, and were thrashed in the Champions League last 16 by Barcelona. Even with full backing from PIF delegates in end-of-season meetings at Matfen Hall, the strain of the campaign and the scale of the rebuild ahead have ultimately led Howe to walk away.
He leaves with credit in the bank and his reputation enhanced, but also with the sense that his project, as originally conceived, had run its course.
A squad in flux for Jaissle
Whoever steps in next will not inherit the same squad Howe took to the Champions League. Newcastle are already deep into a summer of upheaval.
Anthony Gordon has been sold to Barcelona for £69.3 million. Sandro Tonali has joined Tottenham Hotspur in a £100m deal. Those departures alone rip out significant pieces of Howe’s core, both technically and emotionally.
And the reshaping may not be over. Arsenal are actively pursuing star midfielder Bruno Guimaraes, a player central to Newcastle’s resurgence under Howe and a symbol of the club’s new era under PIF. Losing him would turn a challenging rebuild into a full-scale reconstruction.
That is the landscape Jaissle is expected to walk into: a club with financial muscle, ambitious owners and a fanbase now accustomed to aiming high, but a squad being stripped of some of its headline names.
The German’s task, once his appointment is confirmed, will be immediate and unforgiving – impose his high-intensity style, integrate new faces, and prove that Newcastle’s surge into the elite was not a brief, romantic detour but the start of a permanent stay.
