Alan Shearer is backing Newcastle to give Eddie Howe another summer rebuild. The club legend says Howe deserves the chance to work with new signings after a poor run, and after a season that still included a trophy and a Champions League campaign with real highs.
Why Shearer wants Newcastle to go again
Shearer was direct about his view on Howe's future. "He deserves the chance to go again and work with [whichever players] they decide to bring in and then hopefully have a good start to the season," he said.
He also pointed to what the current group has already delivered. "These are the guys that brought Newcastle huge success. They brought a trophy to the club and I do think that's one of the reasons why they should be able to go again this summer and try and work out what's gone wrong," Shearer said.
The poor spell is not in dispute. Newcastle won just three league games between mid-January and late April, and the brief says they slipped from fifth to 13th in the Mirror's wording, while the verified league data in the pack lists them at 11th after 37 matches. Either way, the drop in form was severe enough to make the summer conversation unavoidable.
What the season still gave Howe
The slump should not wipe out everything that came before it. Newcastle beat Liverpool 2-1 in the 2024/25 Carabao Cup final, and they reached the Champions League round of 16 before Barcelona scored seven in the second leg at Spotify Camp Nou.
Their Champions League return ended with a 4-2-2 record, so this was not a season of flat failure. It was a mixed one, with enough good work to make Shearer's argument sound reasonable rather than sentimental.
Howe has also been clear that last summer made life difficult. He said it was "very, very difficult for us" and added that Newcastle had "no sporting director, no chief executive" and that this left "a big hole" in planning. That is a serious point, because the club have since moved to a better place structurally than they were in that period.
Alexander Isak left for Liverpool, while Nick Woltemade and Yoane Wissa were brought in to replace him. Shearer is not asking for blind faith. He is saying the manager who delivered a trophy should be allowed to work through the rebuild with proper support, rather than be judged only on the collapse that followed.
The next test is whether Newcastle's owners agree that the reset is worth giving Howe. Shearer clearly does, and the club now head into another summer with the manager's future still tied to what happens next in the market.
Written by Jack Mercer with AI-assisted research, cross-checked against 1 outlet. How we work →
