Newcastle boss Eddie Howe has admitted he could not have dreamt of being level on points with Paris St Germain, Real Madrid and Liverpool in the Champions League when he arrived on Tyneside.
Three days short of the fourth anniversary of his appointment at St James’ Park, the 47-year-old saw his side claim a third win on the trot in the competition to take them to nine points from their first four games and leave them in esteemed company.
Asked if he could have imagined that the day he replaced Steve Bruce at the helm, Howe said: “That sounds nice, doesn’t it? That does sound good.
“From the minute we walked in, I wouldn’t have predicted that four years later. I probably wouldn’t have predicted that I’d still be sat in the seat four years later, as much as I would have hoped that I would be.
“With the volatility in the game, there’s no guarantee to anything, so I’m very, very proud to still be in this position and to be managing the team going forward.
“But there is a flip side to that. Obviously we’ve got work to do in the Premier League and we’re well aware that we’ve got a big task ahead of us.”
Newcastle sit sixth in the table behind only Bayern Munich, Arsenal and Inter Milan – who boast 100 per cent records – and Manchester City and Paris St Germain and they head for Marseille and Bayer Leverkusen knowing 11 points was enough to make the top 24 last season.
The latest addition to the total came courtesy of Dan Burn’s stunning 11th-minute header before Joelinton wrapped up a win which went some way towards dispelling the horrors of Sunday’s 3-1 Premier League defeat at West Ham.
Asked if Burn’s contribution was even better than the picture-book header he scored in last season’s Carabao Cup final, Howe said: “Probably technically it is, but it will be very difficult for him to do something as magical and memorable as that.
“But in terms of a technical header, that was an incredible finish.”
Howe will await an assessment of the hip injury which forced Anthony Gordon off before the break but was surprised to hear skipper Bruno Guimaraes admit after the game that he felt like he was carrying 10 kilograms on his back after returning from a virus.
He said with a smile: “He wasn’t saying that to me this morning, he said he was fit. He was he was feeling a million dollars this morning, so that’s news to me.”
For opposite number Ernesto Valverde, whose squad was ravaged by injury and illness, there were positives to take from the performance, but not the outcome.
Valverde said: “It was a shame, the fact we were not able to come here with a full-strength team, and obviously we’re disappointed with the result.”
Asked about Burn’s goal, he added: “Maybe we were concentrating on other players and we let the scorer go. It was too obvious, almost, for us to have conceded that. It was an obvious move and we fell for it.”