Eddie Howe responded to the question with a thin smile followed by a flat denial. Newcastle’s manager had just been asked whether his team were jinxed and a sense of deja vu permeated the room.
That query has echoed, periodically, around St James’ Park throughout the 70 years since Gypsies reputedly placed a powerful curse on the club. As staff and players holidayed after winning the FA Cup in 1955, Travellers set up camp at a deserted training ground before being, somewhat unceremoniously, ejected.
Related: Newcastle chief says club ‘would be crazy’ to consider selling Alexander Isak
Regardless of whether the resultant hex is apocryphal – as several of Howe’s 30-odd, post-1955 managerial predecessors invariably argued – Newcastle have since failed to collect a major domestic trophy.
They won the European Fairs Cup in 1969 but since 1955 they have lost three FA Cup and two League Cup finals. Throw in the late stumble by Kevin Keegan’s “Entertainers” in the 1995-96 Premier League title race with Manchester United and it is easy to understand why excitement comes tinged with apprehension on Tyneside as a second Carabao Cup final in three years beckons.
This historical backdrop explains why Newcastle’s captain, Bruno Guimarães, describes Sunday’s Wembley date with Liverpool as “our World Cup final” and why Howe repeatedly reiterates his “burning desire” to end the silverware drought. With the club fast approaching a complicated crossroads there can rarely have been a more opportune moment to eclipse Mohamed Salah and co.
After almost four years in post, Howe could do with presenting Newcastle’s Saudi Arabian owners with the long-craved trophy that would represent a key milestone towards Yasir al-Rumayyan’s aim of conquering Europe.
The chair’s ambition has been slowed appreciably by Premier League profitability and sustainability rules that, owing to Newcastle’s relatively puny commercial revenue streams, limit the ownership’s potentially gargantuan spending power.
PSR regulations have prevented Howe from welcoming a first-team regular during the past three transfer windows. It has left a manager contentiously resistant to a risky sell-to-buy policy lamenting a certain “staleness” in his “thin” squad.
Recent injuries to Sven Botman and Lewis Hall, plus the suspension Anthony Gordon is serving, have emphasised the latter point while reviving talk of curses. Yet, on their day, Newcastle remain formidable opponents and possess players eminently capable of seizing an opportunity for one last hurrah in black and white stripes.
Three of the likely Wembley back four – Kieran Trippier, Fabian Schär and Dan Burn, 34, 33 and 32 respectively – are not alone in knowing that Sunday quite possibly represents a final chance to become immortals in north-east football folklore.
Schär, like Martin Dubravka, Jacob Murphy and Sean Longstaff, is a survivor of the team built by Rafael Benítez almost a decade ago. While the former Switzerland defender remains integral to Howe’s plans, several other mainstays, Trippier, Longstaff and Callum Wilson included, are expected to leave this summer. By then Newcastle hope to be preparing for the Champions League campaign Howe accepts is pivotal if he is to retain his “Fab Four” – Alexander Isak, Sandro Tonali, Guimarães and Gordon – as the nucleus of a reconstructed squad.
Related: Planes, trains and automobiles: Newcastle fans gear up for Carabao Cup final
If showpiece European football can provide an antidote to any itchy feet developed by Isak in particular, a Carabao Cup triumph may anaesthetise supporters’ pain amid significant hikes in St James’ Park’s 2025-26 ticket pricing. Newcastle’s fan advisory board has criticised a decision to increase season ticket costs by 5% for a third year running but with many supporters emerging from 10-year fixed priced deals introduced by the previous owner, Mike Ashley, anger is amplified. In some cases fans must pay 60% more for the same view. Given Newcastle are charging £940 for “category one, standard seats” next season, an undercurrent of dissent festers among fans domiciled in one of England’s most deprived regions.
The Saudis are pondering plans to invest up to £1.5bn on expanding St James’ or moving to a new 70,000 arena. In 2019 dwindling crowds prompted Ashley to issue free half-season tickets to fill the 52,000 capacity ground. Although Newcastle’s football has improved radically since those dark, post-Benítez days and tickets are now heavily oversubscribed, underlying fault lines dictate that a certain fragility remains. This, after all, is a club where civil war briefly erupted when Amanda Staveley, the former minority owner and initial public face of the October 2021 Saudi takeover, was forced out last July.
For a time, a brief, yet intense, turf war between Howe and the new sporting director, Paul Mitchell, seemed destined to end with one man resigning. Instead an enduring truce was brokered but, since such power struggles, Newcastle feels a colder, more corporate place. Staveley’s warm emollience is missed.
Howe is a brilliant coach and clever strategist but he can also be ruthless, obsessive and borderline paranoid
Certain club workers’ perks have been scaled back and St James’ Park box holders, some paying £50,000 a season, had their allocation of Wembley tickets reduced from 10 two years ago to four on Sunday.
No one, Howe least of all, is afraid to be unpopular these days. Newcastle’s manager is a brilliant coach and a clever strategist but he can also be ruthless, obsessive and borderline paranoid. It perhaps explains his decision to offer pared-down pre-cup final media access, after claiming a customary “open day” exercise drained his players’ mental energy before their 2023 Wembley defeat against Manchester United.
Two years ago Burn treated teammates to an evocative rendition of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” speech at Wembley but the defender may tone down the drama this time. “It felt like an emotional moment for the whole city,” said Burn. “Subconsciously it affected us.”
If Howe’s new ploy of suppressing rather than embracing emotion rings alarm bells, devising tactical blueprints remains a forte. Should his latest masterplan succeed in confounding Salah and friends, those questions about curses will finally receive a proper answer.
