Kieran Trippier has stressed that Newcastle’s Carabao Cup win will not distract the team from their overriding ambition this season of achieving Champions League qualification.
Trippier is a key member of Newcastle’s dressing-room leadership group as vice-captain and his message to teammates will be unequivocal. “Myself and the rest of the leadership group will keep everybody level-headed,” the former England full‑back said after making it plain that Eddie Howe’s squad had “definitely not” become legends overnight.
“We’ll enjoy the occasion but the most important thing is that we’ve got 10 games left and we want to finish in the top four. You don’t want to get carried away. It’s all about building and we’ve got a big run-in ahead.”
If, in one sense, the Wembley victory against Liverpool on Sunday altered everything, it also can be seen as changing nothing at all. Although the psychological boost for Newcastle of winning a major domestic trophy for the first time since the 1955 FA Cup is immense, an awful lot still hinges on Champions League qualification.
Howe extended his contract to 2028 amid interest from the Football Association regarding the England job last summer and it is believed a potentially significant pay rise and further lengthening of that deal are contingent on the team qualifying for Europe’s showpiece competition.
The manager is understood to earn around£6m a year, excluding any Carabao Cup bonus but, depending on league position, that sum could rise to nearer £10m in June.
Howe’s team are sixth, two points behind fourth-placed Chelsea with a game in hand. Fifth place is almost certain to be enough for Champions League qualification. A place in the that competition would enable the Saudi Arabia-owned club constrained by Premier League spending rules to invest more extensively in a slender squad in need of refreshment. It could also help to persuade Alexander Isak, Howe’s much-coveted Sweden striker, to sign a contract extension.
Howe, his staff and those players not on international duty fly to Dubai on Monday evening for a few days of rest and relaxation before some warm‑weather training.
Earlier Howe had posed for pictures with the Carabao Cup on the tarmac at Newcastle airport after returning from London. The trophy will be paraded through the streets of Newcastle on Saturday 29 March when the manager, his staff and players will take part in an open-top bus parade.
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Trippier has said the lessons of two years ago when Newcastle lost the Carabao Cup final against Manchester United helped to make such celebrations possible. “The first time [against Manchester United] was too emotional,” he said. “We were more calm before this final, more relaxed. We’d been in this situation before and we knew how to handle it.”
It helped that Newcastle stayed in a luxury Hertfordshire hotel near Watford before the game rather than at the Wembley Hilton, their base two years ago.
“I’ve played in many finals in my career and when you stay so close to the stadium, the supporters are there and players who have never played in a final before … it’s emotional,” Trippier said. “It can take a lot out of you, a lot of energy.”
Source: theguardian.com
