Newcastle boss Eddie Howe is hoping the power and pull of the Champions League will help him strengthen his squad this summer after surviving a final-day scare.
Sunday’s 1-0 home defeat to Everton left the Magpies sweating over a place in the Premier League’s top five, and they ultimately needed a helping hand from elsewhere to add qualification to their Carabao Cup success.
However Howe, who has been unable to make a single major signing in the last three transfer windows while seeing Elliot Anderson, Yankuba Minteh, Miguel Almiron and Lloyd Kelly leave St James’ Park as the club battled to meet spending restrictions, will head into the close-season determined to address that.
He said: “The power of the Champions League and the pull of the Champions League is huge and we can’t get away from that, the excitement that this will bring for the people here.
“And of course it’s a selling point for us now, it’s an opportunity for us to sell that dream to future players that might be considering coming to us.
“We’ve got to get the financials right, we’ve got to get every other aspect of trying to sign players here right, and hopefully we can do that.”
The equation for Newcastle before kick-off was straightforward: win and Champions League football was guaranteed.
But Everton had very different ideas and, when Charly Alcaraz headed the visitors into a 65th-minute lead, the dream was hanging by a thread.
Howe’s side were a long way from their fluent best as the enormity of what was at stake appeared to weigh heavily on them, but ultimately results elsewhere – Chelsea won at Nottingham Forest and 10-man Aston Villa lost 2-0 at Manchester United – saw them prevail on goal difference to spark wild celebrations after the final whistle.
Get 3 months free with ExpressVPN
Servers in 105 Countries
Superior Speeds
Works on all your devices
Try for free
ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
Get 3 months free with ExpressVPN
Servers in 105 Countries
Superior Speeds
Works on all your devices
Try for free
ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
Howe had insisted in advance he did not want to know what was happening in the other games, but admitted that had changed as events unfolded.
He said: “You’re thinking, ‘This might not happen today, what’s happening elsewhere?’. That was where my brain went.
“The last stage of the game was strange because we knew bar a miracle we were going to get there, but we still wanted to try to come back and win.”
For Everton boss David Moyes, the season ended on a high note with a third successive victory.
Moyes said: “I thought it was a great performance, the character the players showed throughout the game. We turned up not really needing anything today from the game, we couldn’t really change our league position, but you wouldn’t have thought that with the way the players performed today.
“I thought they were magnificent, maybe as good as we’ve been in any game in some ways, so it says a lot about the players’ attitude, their commitment.
“It would have been easy for them to, what do they say, be on a beach. They certainly weren’t that today.”
