GAFFER HAS THE KNOW

EDDIE HOWE will plot Newcastle’s Premier League survival with the same basic tools he applied 13 years ago to keep old club Bournemouth in the Football League.

Toon co-owner Amanda Staveley (left, with Howe) has already pledged to apportion a hefty slice of the club’s Saudi-financed budget into upgrading training facilities, which are rated among the most basic and out of date in the top flight.

That is expected to entail the demolition of the cramped onestorey building in Benton, replacing it with a state-of-the-art structure befitting the world’s richest football club. But Howe’s focus is strictly on the short term, admitting that Newcastle’s current plight is so precarious he cannot yet look ahead to the days when the Magpies are competing for the best players on the planet.

And so he is more than happy to get by with wheelie bins being used as ice baths and sending injured players to a nearby David Lloyd gym as part of their recovery programme because Newcastle don’t have their own pool. Howe had been out of work since leaving the Vitality Stadium in August 2020.

However, he considers himself at the cutting edge of football’s latest technology and has spent recent months honing his own coaching techniques with a series of bitesize videos for his charges to watch.

But despite surrounding himself with all the latest mod cons, the former Burnley boss, 43, remains a traditionalist when it comes to the everyday work on the training ground.

And he needed just one look at the lush pastures of turf between the outdated Darsley Park site and the club’s newer academy to feel