Newcastle had been planning Howe's replacement for nine months, sporting director reveals

Newcastle United were quietly preparing for Eddie Howe’s managerial exit for up to nine months before he stepped down in July, sporting director Ross Wilson has confirmed — a timeline that stretches back to before Wilson himself joined the club from Nottingham Forest in October.

“I came here 10 or 11 months ago and I’ve been planning in the background for a managerial change over eight or nine of those months,” Wilson said. “That doesn’t mean we were always going to go to Matthias, but he was always part of our planning.”

Howe left St James’ Park following a disappointing 12th-place Premier League finish, with the 47-year-old opting to take a break after five years in charge on Tyneside. He was succeeded by Matthias Jaissle, the former Red Bull Salzburg and Al-Ahli manager.

Wilson was keen to push back on any suggestion the transition was mishandled. “Clearly the timing wasn’t planned. But the reason we could move so quickly was because we’d been preparing for a number of months,” he said. “Eddie’s an exceptionally talented coach and that meant he was probably going to do something else at some point. We had to be prepared for that. Eddie leaving didn’t feel chaotic and it didn’t feel painful.”

The managerial change was not the only significant departure at Newcastle this summer. Anthony Gordon, Sandro Tonali, and Bruno Guimarães all left the club, with the Brazilian midfielder’s £75m move to Arsenal drawing a candid admission from Wilson.

“There’s no point pretending otherwise: we did not want to lose Bruno Guimarães,” he said. “That was really disappointing. But everything else that happened during the window was planned.”

Wilson acknowledged the club did not land every transfer target it pursued. “That doesn’t mean every single player was the number one name on our list. Clearly we were disappointed a couple of times but that’s normal. No club reaches the end of a window getting every target they wanted.”

The remarks paint a picture of a club that, despite the scale of its summer upheaval, believes it managed the transition with deliberate planning rather than reactive scrambling — even if the loss of Guimarães remained a source of genuine regret.