Amanda Staveley makes revealing Eddie Howe admission as Newcastle United boss gets to work

Here’s everything Amanda Staveley said in her interview with Newcastle United today – including her thoughts on ‘incredible’ Eddie Howe and her hopes and plans for Newcastle United’s future:

Eddie Howe

“We are so excited about Eddie joining and heading up the first-team. He’s an incredible coach.

“We did a very robust managerial search and we were very proud to appoint such an incredible manager to lead Newcastle United into the next phase of its development.”

Process of manager hunt

“We, and particularly PIF, are a process driven organisation and one thing we’ve learned in football is that things will move incredibly quickly sometimes.

“When we’d had our eye on the right manager and we had spoken with Eddie sometime ago and we had discussed his appointment, actually back when Mike was running the club.

“We have to do a full search of the marketplace to find the perfect fit and Eddie is the perfect fit. We couldn’t have imagined bringing in a better manager, he’s so dynamic.

“I think one of the things when we do a lot of analysis on managers on analytics and data, he scored so highly across all mediums.

“He’s obviously had an incredible impact on Bournemouth and having someone who has grown a club from League Two all the way to the Premier League is an incredible achievement.

“I think we were so impressed that he had done that with quite limited resources.

“It’s very easy to win trophies when you’ve got a lot of money or a lot of infrastructure or a lot of people, but actually, when you are limited by those factors, his success really shone out.

“Not just his success but Jason [Tindall] and his whole team. He’s got a great team that’s joining him that we’re also really proud to welcome in.”

Howe’s experience and club’s current position

“We had to have someone leading the club that was not frightened of relegation.

“I remember Eddie and I talking about this at the weekend at the Brighton match.

“He’s going back into a position that he’s sat in before, it's not one we’ve sat in as an investor group.

“We were nor brave, but it would have been an easy decision for us to not buy the club just yet, wait till probably post-Christmas, post the January window and see where the club sat in the league and then made the acquisition, that would have been the safe investment - but we didn’t do that.

“We decided that if we didn’t get it now, it wasn’t going to happen and we had to take that risk and we took the risk because the club was sitting in 19th position at the time.

“Eddie took that risk knowing that there is a chance of relegation [but] I think he is just going to do the most incredible job and the first-team.

“We’ve got a fabulous squad of players that I have become very fond of in a very quick time and I know they’re going to work really well with him.”

How life has been since the takeover

“Pretty exhausting. Every 24 hours of every day except for maybe three or four hours sleep.

“It is exhausting, exhilarating, the welcome we’ve had in Newcastle has been so extraordinary, so special.

“I think we just don’t want to let anyone down and the thing I want to do is to be able to communicate with the fans and that if we do make mistakes, we will quickly own up to them and put them right.

“It has been a challenging five weeks but a very rewarding five weeks.”

Work behind the scenes

“We’ve been through analysing every area. Investment is needed in every area. We’ve spent time with the academy teams, with the foundation and all of the other departments and it’s clear a lot of investment is needed.

“We’re trying to talk to the teams here, it’s a big family and everyone is incredibly passionate about their jobs.

“One of the things I have felt is this extraordinary feeling of being in a family and people come up to you very quickly and suggest opportunities and better ways of working and more efficient ways of working.

“I think that’s our first starting point.

“Getting Eddie in place was critical, finding that appointment was the most important thing we could do.

“Now we need to make sure the infrastructure that surrounds the first-team, whether it’s new training facilities, we’re looking at building a new academy and that’s something that is on the agenda as well.”

The welcome from supporters

“I attended the Newcastle United Foundation dinner last night and it was so much fun, it was like being part of a great, incredibly close group of people and we were raising money for really important causes.

“Actually, that puts into context what we do. When you look at the work of the foundation and you see the stories of some of the award winners, it puts into context just how privileged I am to sit here in my job and I think about how tough it is for a lot of people just to feed their families.

“And one thing I love about Newcastle is the support from the whole community.”

What’s next for Newcastle United?

“We’ve got a robust business plan and we’re developing that every week.

“January is upon us and we’re preparing for the January transfer window. It’s not a window we would ordinarily want to invest in because you probably don’t get the right deals, but that’s something that is important at the moment, preparing for that.”

“And then preparing and working alongside all the teams, we’ve got a lot of meetings set up over the next few weeks with the staff and we look forward to working with everybody.

“I have to say that everyone has been just so incredibly welcoming and we’re very privileged, Mehrdad and I and the PIF and the Ruben family to have just a fantastic supporter base and team here at the club.”