Eddie Howe calls on PIF to dig deep to fulfil Newcastle United’s Champions League ambitions

NEWCASTLE: It has been less than a week since Newcastle United’s two-decade wait to qualify for the Champions League was rubber-stamped, but Eddie Howe’s eyes are already turning to next season. The head coach, renowned for his incredible work ethic and drive, is not about to rest on his laurels just because Newcastle have muscled their way into Europe’s elite, way ahead of the ownership group’s schedule. Instead, he is urging those at the top — primarily majority shareholders, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia — that while getting to the top might have been relatively inexpensive, the next step definitely won’t be.

He said: “Unfortunately players don’t come cheap, especially good players. “Yes, we are going to have to spend a certain amount of money. How much that is I don’t know.

I still don’t know what my budget is at this moment in time, but there will have to be some expenditure. It will have to be controlled. It will have to be under FFP restrictions, which we have worked under and will continue to work under.

They are definitely impacting us and what we will be able to do. “We’re planning to sit down in the next couple of days and go through things now it’s been finalized. We’ll see how that goes.

“Going into last summer, I had a vision and the reality was different at the end, but I was really pleased at the end when the window shut. I was like, ‘We have done some really good work here.’ That’s going to need to be repeated. This will be our hardest window to date.