Newcastle boss Eddie Howe has admitted he did not forget about football for even one second as he lay in his hospital bed battling pneumonia.
The 47-year-old was hospitalised on April 11 after becoming unwell and missed three Premier League games as he worked his way back to health.
Assistant Jason Tindall, who along with Graeme Jones took charge of the team in the head coach’s absence, insisted throughout that his former Bournemouth team-mate needed to concentrate on his recovery and not even think about football.
However, asked if he was able to do that, Howe said: “It makes me laugh, that, ‘forget about football’. It’s impossible when you’re in my job. I didn’t forget about football for a second.
“Everyone was saying, ‘You need to relax, take it easy’, and I’m, ‘Nah’. It doesn’t happen because you know you’re coming back to the job and you know if you’re idle in the job for a few days, the job gets difficult.
“You can’t rest. Even the summer, it’s never a case of you turn the phone off and then you turn it on two weeks later. If you did that, there would be carnage.
“You’re involved in the job every day and you’re having to make decisions and communicate with people on a daily basis, and that’s how the job has always been for me.”
That said, Howe’s illness has left him with a fresh perspective on life and work even as he prepares for Sunday’s crucial Premier League clash with Everton, in which victory would guarantee a return to Champions League football for the Magpies barring an extraordinary goal difference swing.
He said: “That experience was bizarre. One minute you’re managing the team and the next minute, you’re in a hospital bed thinking that’s some change from feeling okay to not.
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“It goes the show the vulnerability that we potentially all face with our bodies and in our lives. You’re so busy and sometimes you can neglect the most important things, so that was an important reminder for me that your health is such a fragile thing.”
Newcastle already have a place in the Conference League as a result of winning the Carabao Cup, and are all but assured of upgrading to Europa League football at worst via the league.
However, it is the Champions League Howe and his players want even if they might stand a better chance of winning one of the other trophies on offer.
He said: “I don’t want to come across as negative towards the Europa League because it’s a great competition. You’ve seen in the last few days what impact it can have on respective clubs, and that is not to be devalued at all.
“But when you have a competition which we’ve been in not so long ago and you saw the emotion it brought and the quality of games we had, the experience was second to none. That is naturally where we want to be.”
