‘Faith healer’ Eddie Howe makes Newcastle United dream again - and forms unbreakable Tyneside bond

Faith is a funny thing. By nature it is anything but fickle, however in practice it picks and chooses when to arrive in the consciousness.

It's something you have to actively remind yourself to believe in. Confidence in something, anything - upon which faith is ultimately built - can be the hardest thing to ever piece back together when broken.

Newcastle United fans, for so long, were broken. Faith, if it remained, became blind and confidence and trust strained to within a sinew of breakage. We know who did it, but I don't mention his name these days. He's not worth it. Sadly, many dropped into his black hole, joining the cheap tat and even cheaper values and rhetoric.

Faith stretched to the talk of old days with a generational black and white hue. Glories of days gone by, past heroes, old songs, smells, tastes and experiences stir something inside. Well, that was until the reality of what it meant to support Newcastle United from around 2007 actually hit home.

You never chose to fall in love with Newcastle United, it chose you. But for 15 years it became insufferable, like a marriage ripped beyond repair. It turned the other way when you walked in the room, and, to be honest, you quite welcomed that most Saturdays, anyway.

The joy became the day out, the drink with the family, the lads, the lasses, not the match. The match was a chore which only acted as a miserable but necessary interlude between Rosies and the Strawberry.

We all know, October 2021 changed all of that. But I'd argue November was the month when Ashl*y's gloom was given real hope of being lifted. And it's all down to a Buckinghamshire-born student of the game, one without ego but plenty of the tough stuff.

Stand forward and show yourself to the congregation, Newcastle United's faith healer, Edward John Frank Howe.

He wasn't first choice, it's hard to find anyone who'd argue he was. One half of the ownership model were convinced, the other less so. They went for another man. Howe knows all this. It would have hurt but he didn't let it bother him. They eventually turned his way. They’ve had few regrets since. This was his chance, his chance to be more than he'd ever been capable of at Bournemouth.

I love remembering back to those days of Zoom press conferences, raised and lowered hands and boxes of familiar press pack faces. A football dinosaur used that national platform to call Eddie Howe 'that bloke who took Bournemouth down', oh how he must have enjoyed that one. Doesn’t seem so funny now, does it?

Howe is doing and seeing things that ground-shaking lizard of the game could only dream of, and you feel the best is still yet to come. Because with Howe, he is not just happy with restoring the faith, making Newcastle good again - he will not stop until greatness is achieved, or he’ll fall on his sword trying. It's just the way he is built, you see it in everything he does and says.

You have to roll the clock back to the days of either Kevin Keegan in the 1990s or Sir Bobby Robson in the 2000s for the feeling you get with Howe's United. Saturday gone was a case in point.

Newcastle going into every game knowing they're likely to win. Tough against the top sides, like tonight, but against Burnley, or Sheffield United or Brentford or most others - three points feels like a given. That confidence, that faith, has been earned by Howe and his players, who play a physical, intense, old English style. One where they will beat you with quality, but even if that fails them, they'll do it running and tackling harder than you as well.

A generation of Newcastle fans knew nothing but pain, now they're clambering for Kylian Mbappe's autograph on the banks of the Tyne. Howe changed all that, albeit with a sprinkling of PIF magic dust. He’s done something few have been capable of in this part of the world. The connection, the electricity from back row to centre circle is alive again.

Tonight this is for everyone, those who kept faith and those who lost it. It's for those who always knew and those who forgot what a football club was even meant to be anymore. A win is far from guaranteed, but everyone believes it possible again. That’s real power in that.

This is for every one of you, including Howe - the man from humble beginnings and background, who has brought glitz, glamour and overall faith back to this Northern footballing outpost.