Eddie Howe is out at Newcastle, 25 days before the season opener against Liverpool

[Natalie91]

Eddie Howe has left his role as Newcastle head coach after nearly five years in charge, with the decision reportedly following discussions with the club's hierarchy over the last 48 hours, though Howe had apparently been quietly setting the wheels in motion for a potential exit for a number of weeks before that

The timing here is genuinely brutal for a club, this is 25 days before the season opener against Liverpool, Howe was still actively preparing the squad for that fixture right up until this point, and his actual final game in charge was a rough 4-1 pre season loss to Championship side Bristol City just the night before

A lot of this traces back to a difficult summer of business, Newcastle already sold Sandro Tonali and Anthony Gordon, on top of last summer's British record 125 million pound sale of Alexander Isak to Liverpool, and now there is real uncertainty hanging over captain Bruno Guimaraes with Arsenal reportedly interested, Howe himself refused to guarantee Guimaraes would stay when asked directly in his final press conference

Howe had apparently spent months genuinely reflecting on his future and believed he could keep pushing the club forward this season provided Newcastle recruited well, the incoming business so far has been fairly modest, a 42 million pound winger from Hoffenheim, a 23 million pound midfielder from Ajax and an 18.5 million pound goalkeeper from Reims, and the club also reportedly lost out on a target to Aston Villa recently, which does read like exactly the kind of summer that would frustrate a manager hoping for statement signings

Whatever the immediate trigger, it is hard to overstate what Howe actually built at Newcastle, he ended the club's 70 year wait for a major trophy with the League Cup, took them into the Champions League twice off the back of top five Premier League finishes, and pushed them further in Europe last season than the club had ever managed before, this is a significant managerial reign ending abruptly rather than a mutual parting that felt inevitable for months

Eddie Howe: Newcastle head coach leaves role with Magpies after nearly five years in chargewww.skysports.com

[DQ Eric]

25 days before the Liverpool opener with no successor lined up publicly yet is an alarming timeline for preseason preparation, whoever comes in barely gets a training camp with the squad

[Layla17]

The Bristol City result the night before this announcement feels like it can't be a coincidence, a 4-1 pre season loss to a Championship side is the kind of result that tends to accelerate decisions that were already brewing behind the scenes

[VoidSentinel66]

Selling Isak, Tonali and Gordon across two windows while also potentially losing your captain is not a normal summer for a club trying to build on Champions League progress, hard to blame a manager for feeling like the project stalled

[RayOfLight87]

The League Cup win alone should cement Howe's legacy at Newcastle regardless of how this ends, ending a 70 year trophy drought is not something many managers in that dugout ever got close to doing

[QuantumLeap]

To be fair the recruitment this summer isn't nothing, three players in their late teens and early twenties for a combined 83 million isn't a disaster business wise, it just isn't the marquee signings a manager coming off an actual European run would hope to see

[Isaac93]

Genuinely curious who Ross Wilson and David Hopkinson have shortlisted, this feels like exactly the kind of vacancy that attracts a mix of ambitious younger coaches and experienced names looking for a project with real European pedigree already built in

[ReacherLynx]

Guimaraes staying or going now feels like it will define whoever takes this job just as much as Howe's own departure did, that saga was clearly already weighing heavily even before this announcement dropped