Newcastle United
Today's Talking Points
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1Eddie Howe's near five-year reign ended abruptly in July, when he stepped down less than 24 hours after a pre-season friendly defeat to Championship side Bristol City. Nobody saw it coming — Howe had just delivered Newcastle's first major trophy in decades the season before, so the timing floored fans as much as it did the club.
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2German coach Matthias Jaissle arrived from Al Ahli to replace him and has started unbeaten: Newcastle came from two goals down to draw 2-2 at Bournemouth, then won 2-0 away at Tottenham.
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3Anthony Elanga swapped Nottingham Forest for Newcastle in a £55m summer deal, and Yoane Wissa arrived too — between them they scored both goals in that win over Spurs, and Wissa's already being called 'Newcastle's best signing' by people inside the club.
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4Elanga did have a scare in pre-season, stretchered off after a bad tackle in a friendly at Valencia. It turned out to be a dead leg and bruising rather than anything serious, and he was fit for the season opener.
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5The Jaissle era has gone smoother than the sudden managerial change suggested it might — an unbeaten start with two big-money new faces already clicking is not the disaster script anyone was writing back in July.
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Top thing to say down the pub
Everyone thought Newcastle sacking Eddie Howe in pre-season was going to be a disaster — so far Jaissle's turned it into one of the calmer stories in the league.
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Avoid saying
"Newcastle are still an Eddie Howe team really" — say that to a Newcastle fan now and they'll politely explain Howe left in July, there's a new manager in, and two of the players scoring the goals weren't even at the club last season.
