Newcastle add golden ticket of Champions League return to silverware
Newcastle United's players entered St James' Park into an atmosphere at boiling point with a message stretched across the entire length of the famous Gallowgate End outlining what was at stake."You Entered The Pitch As Players. You Left It As Legends" was emblazoned on a giant banner as the club's quest to reach the Champions League went to the final stages against Everton.Newcastle and manager Eddie Howe got there in the end to go some way towards that status – but it did not go smoothly as hoped.Howe's side were a pale shadow of their usual vibrant selves as Everton shut out the deafening noise sweeping down from the Toon Army to deservedly win 1-0, Newcastle riddled with nerves and tension throughout, the mood spreading to the stands.And for 11 anxious minutes in the second half, in the time it took Carlos Alcaraz to head Everton in front after 65 minutes and until former Sunderland forward Amad Diallo put Manchester United ahead against Aston Villa at Old Trafford to return Newcastle to the top five, it looked like they would be leaving the pitch heartbroken.In the end, all was well that ended well as they added the golden ticket of a return to the Champions League to the silver, with their first domestic trophy in 70 years and first success of any kind since 1969 following the Carabao Cup final triumph against Liverpool.Even then, some Newcastle players were clearly unaware of events at Old Trafford when the final whistle signalled defeat, Tino Livramento and others slumping to the turf in dismay, looking like they believed the place in Europe's elite competition had been lost.Once Aston Villa's controversial loss had been confirmed, the Champions League anthem sounded around St James Park, full-scale elation breaking out among Howe, his players and their families, and the fans.The anxiety, and the many televised shots of Newcastle's supporters biting their nails, was forgotten as they went through their full Champions League song-sheet in readiness for next season.
Despite the anti-climax of this performance, it capped a superb season for Newcastle and their inspirational manager Howe.The start to their campaign was overshadowed by financial uncertainly as Howe became a reluctant seller to avoid the club breaking profit and sustainability rules. It has ended in glory, with the estimated £100m riches of the Champions League flooding into the coffers.The notion of Newcastle winning silverware and qualifying for the Champions League seemed a distant prospect during those troubled times.A transfer of England forward Anthony Gordon to Liverpool was considered, while there was a concern a £100m buy-out clause for Brazil midfield man Bruno Guimaraes might also be activated.No offer came from Anfield for boyhood Liverpool fan Gordon, nor for Guimaraes, so it was talented young duo Yankuba Minteh and Elliott Anderson who were sacrificed to Brighton and Nottingham Forest respectively.To add to Howe's frustration, the summer-long pursuit of Crystal Palace's Marc Guehi also ended in failure, with no deal done and the England defender remaining at Selhurst Park.Howe, though, managed the instability superbly, recovering from an indifferent start to lead his side to that long-awaited trophy, then changing the club's landscape even further by taking them back into the Champions League.It has been a remarkable piece of management, clearing away any clouds of uncertainty still lingering at St James' Park.And Howe sounded in the mood to move Newcastle forward in a significant manner when he discussed this summer's transfer business."Yes, it is going to be a big transfer window," he said. "It's difficult to say on numbers, but I do think it's a window that we have to be active in and I'm sure we will be."We haven't recruited strongly in three windows and I think eventually, that can catch up with you in the end if you continue not to change, because change is an important part of the squad dynamic."I think we feel that, and I think, we potentially felt that last summer as well, so I think that's why the players have done so well to carry the success through."Newcastle's resolve – which in their defence has never wavered – to keep outstanding striker Alexander Isak may just have been tested had they failed to finish in the top five. Now the Swede has the stage he craves, and which his ability deserves. Talk of a new contract will replace any speculation about a departure.The same will apply to coveted, and influential, midfield duo Guimaraes and Sandro Tonali.Jacob Murphy, at 30, finally fulfilled the potential Howe believed he had with eight goals and 12 assists in 30 Premier League games, while Isak, inevitably, was the spearhead with 23 goals and adding six assists in 34 league appearances.At the heart of it all is Howe, whose legendary status on Tyneside has been cemented even further by this landmark and memorable campaign.He believes Newcastle will be in better shape following their last Champions League appearance during the 2023-24 campaign, when they had an outstanding 4-1 home win over French champions Paris St-Germain but failed to reach the knockout phase."The experience we had there the first time will help us no end, I think," admitted Howe."We felt we grew through the competition, so I think we are stronger. I think we are better prepared both physically and mentally for the competition ahead."Newcastle have already had one big parade and party for the Carabao Cup success. The celebrations on Sunday may not reach those heights, but the significance of what has been achieved, albeit with their season ending in defeat, cannot be underestimated.
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The Guardian
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The skill of the book was that its pace and seemingly forensic detail encouraged readers to suspend disbelief and accept that not only was the plot real, but that the Jackal – an anonymous English assassin – almost pulled it off. In fact, at certain points, the reader's sympathy lies with the Jackal rather than with his victim. It was a publishing tour de force, winning the Mystery Writers' of America Edgar award for best first novel, attracting a record paperback deal at the Frankfurt book fair and being quickly filmed by the US director Fred Zinnemann, with Edward Fox as the ruthless Jackal. Forsyth was offered a flat fee for the film rights (£20,000) or a fee plus a percentage of the profits – he took the flat fee, later admitting that he was 'pathetic at money'. 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These included The Fourth Protocol (1984), which had a cameo role for the British spy-in-exile Kim Philby and was also successfully filmed, with a screenplay by Forsyth and starring Michael Caine and a pre-Bond Pierce Brosnan and, against type, The Phantom of Manhattan (1999), a sequel to Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. Nothing, however, was to match the impact of The Day of the Jackal and when a Guardian journalist spotted a copy in a London flat used by the world's most wanted terrorist, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, or 'Carlos', in 1975, the British press dubbed him Carlos the Jackal, with no need to explain the reference. Born in Ashford, Kent, Frederick was the son of Phyllis and Frederick Sr, shopkeepers at 4 North Street – his mother's dress business operated on the ground floor and his father sold furs on the first floor. He was educated at Tonbridge school, where supportive teachers and summer holidays abroad ensured that Frederick excelled at French, German and Russian. 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The Reuters' office in East Berlin was a plum posting for any journalist in 1963 as the cold war turned distinctly chilly, despite the attentions of the East German security services. However, when he returned to Britain in 1965 for a job as a diplomatic correspondent with the BBC, it was Broadcasting House rather than East Berlin which he found to be 'a nest of vipers'. Forsyth's relationship with the BBC hierarchy was antagonistic from the start and deteriorated rapidly when he was sent to Nigeria in 1967 to cover the civil war then unravelling. Objecting to the unquestioning acceptance of Nigerian communiques that downplayed the situation, by both the Foreign Office and the BBC, Forsyth began to file stories putting the secessionist Biafran side of the story as well as the developing humanitarian crisis. He was recalled to London for an official BBC reprimand but returned to Nigeria as a freelance at his own expense to cover the increasingly bloody war and to write a Penguin special, The Biafra Story (1969). He returned to Britain for Christmas 1969, low on funds, his BBC career in tatters and with nowhere to live. On 2 January 1970, camped out in the flat of a friend, he began to write a novel on a battered portable typewriter. After 35 days The Day of the Jackal was finished, and fame and fortune followed. In 1973 he married Carrie (Carole) Cunningham, and they moved to Spain to avoid the rates of income tax likely to be introduced by an incoming Labour government. In 1974 they relocated to County Wicklow in Ireland, where writers and artists were treated gently when it came to tax, returning to Britain in 1980 once Margaret Thatcher was firmly established in Downing Street. By 1990, Forsyth had undergone an amicable divorce from Carrie, but a far less amicable separation from his investment broker and his life savings, and claimed to have lost more than £2m in a share fraud. To recoup his losses, Forsyth threw himself into writing fiction, producing another string of bestsellers, although none had the impact of his first three novels. He was appointed CBE in 1997 and received the Crime Writers' Association's Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement in 2012. In 2016 he announced that he would write no more thrillers and that his memoir The Outsider (2015), which revealed that he had worked as an unpaid courier for MI6, or 'The Firm' as he called it, would be his swansong. 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The spectacular success of The Day of the Jackal did however encourage a new generation, among them the ITN reporter Gerald Seymour, whose debut novel, Harry's Game, was generously reviewed by Forsyth in the Sunday Express in 1975. Years later, Seymour remembered the impact of Forsyth's debut, The Day of the Jackal: 'That really hit the news rooms. There was a feeling that it should be part of a journalist's knapsack to have a thriller.' Despite having declared Forsyth's retirement from fiction, his publisher Bantam announced the appearance of an 18th novel, The Fox, in 2018. Based on real-life cases of young British hackers, The Fox centres on an 18-year-old schoolboy with Asperger syndrome and the ability to access the computers of government security and defence systems. For Christmas 1973 Disney based the short film The Shepherd, a ghostly evocation of second world war airfields, on a 1975 short story by Forsyth. 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