Eddie Howe winning Carabao Cup for Newcastle a victory for English coaches

People quickly move on.

Focus will turn to England's first German manager and the tedious conversation over whether he'll sing God Save the King before two inevitably one-sided home wins over Albania and Latvia. How disrespectful it will be to our nation's proud heritage should he sing it. Or not sing it.

The apparent issue of Thomas Tuchel's unavoidable Germanness will act as the perfect bridge to what happened at Wembley on the Sunday prior, where a coach of the correct nationality ended his club's 70-year wait for a domestic trophy.

And just as importantly, but seemingly less celebrated, a 17-year drought for his English peers.

While I scoff at the national anthem debate (and genuinely, I do) summing up the enormity of Newcastle's victory over Liverpool is difficult.

Even the most dismissive of what is objectively English football's tertiary competition would surely accept the magnitude of Sunday's events on various levels.

The Manchester clubs, Chelsea and Liverpool had won the last 12 EFL Cup finals. Even in the FA Cup, only one of the last 11 has seen the established elite fail to emerge with the trophy, and Leicester's 2021 win has a giant covid-restricted asterisk attached to it with only 20,000 fans allowed into Wembley on that sunny May afternoon.

It's just not supposed to happen.

And English managers definitely aren't supposed to be the ones doing it.

“It’s really important. Hopefully one can become more – there’s no guarantee, though – but I just think it proves we can do it."

In reacting to Newcastle's triumph, Eddie Howe - as modest a manager as there is - could just as easily have been talking about his personal achievement opening the door for other English coaches; Harry Redknapp's leading of Portsmouth to the 2008 FA Cup had been the last time an Englishman lifted silverware at Wembley.

That long gap should surprise no one given the self-fulfilling nature of modern day managerial recruitment.

When Howe arrived at St James' in late 2021 he was roundly considered a short-term, pragmatic appointment. There to put foundations in place for a bigger name to build on. A marriage of convenience as much as anything, with the former Bournemouth boss out of work having stepped down after the Cherries were relegated from the top flight the previous summer.

And why wouldn't people think that? What had he ever done anyway? That wonderfully narrow-minded, Premier League-centric view that dominates the footballing narrative.

A manager who, having saved a club from relegation out of the Football League and led them all the way to the top flight, is discarded as a failure following one season of relegation. At best he is considered as mediocre, by virtue of the clubs he has thus far managed.

Graham Potter and Nathan Jones are the only two managers to have even been taken from the EFL for a Premier League job of any kind over the past decade, with clubs instead looking to European leagues to find their next coaching messiah.

While between them Sam Allardyce and Neil Warnock aren't the best poster children for fronting the argument that foreign coaches are automatically considered superior to English ones, quite frankly making a pig's ear of how they framed the debate by ignoring the reality of their regressive styles of play, fundamentally they are right.

What is more likely to happen with Eddie Howe is that many people find ways to excuse, rather than champion, what he's achieved.

Saudi investment. Newcastle had already reached the Champions League. Liverpool were tired and shit.

But the stark reality for English coaches in the modern day is the best opportunities they're going to get will only ever be imperfect.

Howe inherited a club bottom of the Premier League recently taken over by a ruthless Gulf state with a stained reputation for beheadings and state-sponsored murder. Potter walked into Chelsea at the height of disarray, giving team meetings to players sitting on the floor because there weren't enough chairs.

Can you blame them for taking what they can get?

Howe has now eclipsed the late great Sir Bobby Robson's achievements on Tyneside, and after basking in that glory during the international break his gaze will no doubt turn to what's next.

Rather poetically the legendary former England and Newcastle boss was the last Englishman to win a European trophy by leading Barcelona to the Cup Winners’ Cup way back in 1997, something Howe can now look to emulate next season.

As for the Premier League, no Englishman has ever won it, with Howard Wilkinson the last to win the title by leading Leeds to victory in the final season of the old First Division in 1992.

"We were well aware of history," said Howe. "We knew what was at stake for all of our fans. We wanted to do them and the club proud and win the trophy.

"We are breaking new ground."

Not just we Eddie, you.

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