Carabao Cup final: Eddie Howe becomes first English manager to win major trophy in 17 years

Carabao Cup final: Eddie Howe becomes first English manager to win major trophy in 17 years

Eddie Howe became the first English manager to win a trophy in 17 years when Newcastle United beat Liverpool to win its maiden Carabao Cup Trophy at the Wembley Stadium here on Sunday.

The last time an English manager won a major trophy was Harry Redknapp with Portsmouth, securing the FA Cup title in 2008.

“When I won the FA Cup with Portsmouth in 2008, I never thought we would still be waiting for the next English manager to lift silverware. But here we are, 17 years on, and still twiddling our thumbs, which is one of the reasons why I’d love to see Eddie Howe do so with Newcastle on Sunday at Wembley,” Redknapp had written before the clash, in his column for The Sun.

Howe also became the first English manager to win the League Cup in over two decades. The last Englishman to do so was Steve McClaren with Middlesbrough in 2004.

“I’m so pleased not just with the result, but with the performance. I thought we deserved the win today,” Howe said.

“It was tough when Liverpool scored. I was thinking about extra time. We always make it difficult for ourselves it was never going to be 2-0.

“We worked consistently for two weeks on set plays just for this game and if you had seen us in practice you would have said we had no chance.

“We couldn’t believe Dan Burn scored, he didn’t train like that! He was a colossus for us.”

Howe out-foxed Liverpool boss Arne Slot, admitting he did not use his most effective tactics in its 2-0 loss at Anfield in February in a bid to keep some surprises in store for the final.

“We didn’t want to show our hand when we played them a few weeks ago, we still wanted to win that game we just did it in a different way,” he said.

“Both teams were quite direct and we dealt with that really well. Nobody wanted to make a mistake, there wasn’t much pretty football played but we were effective in both boxes.”

(With inputs from AFP)

Published on Mar 17, 2025