I knew Howe to save Toon!
EDDIE: I WAS NEVER WORRIED ABOUT THE DROP
EDDIE Howe says he never doubted for a second that he would keep Newcastle up this season.
The Toon made an awful start to the campaign and showed boss Steve Bruce the door in November.
At that time, the Magpies were five points adrift of safety and marooned in the relegation zone.
Plenty of “bigger” names were touted for the job but the club went for Howe and it has paid off massively.
After six months in charge, Newcastle have flown up the Premier League and haven’t been involved in the relegation fight for several weeks now.
Howe insists he never thought it would be any other way when he took the hotseat.
He said: “I was always very calm and that’s my personality.
“If there’s a problem, then I’ll try to go away and fix it and work to find solutions, not really panicking or reacting adversely.
“I’m very much a thinker, so I was very calm and I always believed.
“I always believed in the players and that was regardless of the transfer window. I always believed that we could stay in the division.
“I said that many times and I don’t say it if I don’t believe it. I believe you can do special things on the training ground with players, you can improve players to a level that they don’t think they’re capable of.
Tribute
“I still feel we have a long way to go in that respect, but the training ground work is what I love and that’s what we’ll really be focusing on for pre- season.”
As well as bringing in quality players like Bruno Guimaraes, Howe has paid tribute to the Toon Army for getting behind the team.
The atmosphere has changed completely at St James’s Park.
He said: “The biggest compliment I can pay the supporters is that they stuck with us through that difficult period where we weren’t winning and the expectation was we were running out of chances to win and then our Premier League survival was almost slipping away.
“But the unity was there and that definitely helped us when we sparked our form upwards.
“Then the crowd took off and they have been pivotal in our success.”