It has been a good few months since the Newcastle United summer of turbulence on Tyneside.
A time that seemed to drag on forever, where sagas were played out on a worldwide stage and where one person appeared to bear the brunt of the carnage and disruption that our club suffered.
As he constantly fronted up to the media, his demeanour looking increasingly affected by the bombshell that had gone off.
Without any immediate structure above him, Eddie Howe, with help from his chief scout, began a belated search for much needed reinforcements.
What followed was frustration and finger pointing, resulting in eventual signings, but whether they were all first choice targets is open for debate.
Whether Paul Mitchell did enough in his Sporting Director tenure in pursuit of various players remains debatable, but the criticism aimed at him by the Burnley owner over the James Trafford debacle would suggest not. The arrival and subsequent culpability of Aaron Ramsdale makes this even more annoying.
Whether Eddie Howe has signed duds in Elanga and Ramsey is also open to question (even though many have already made that assumption).
The biggest miss in the summer, in my view, was the hijacking of the Hugo Ekitike deal by Liverpool. Ekitike would have fitted our blueprint so well, pace to burn and goals to go with it.
Losing Alexander Isak only compounded the disappointment of losing out on the Frenchman.
That concludes the case for the defence
Which brings me to now, and the seemingly growing clamour amongst some Newcastle United fans for change in our dugout.
So lets get it out there…
I am a big Eddie Howe fan.
I am still a big Eddie Howe fan.
His galvanising of a club that was on its knees was admirable, he sensed the detachment on the training pitch and the terraces and I said at the time…we needed someone like Eddie Howe, just like he needed to prove himself at a big club.
I’m not going to spend time comparing him to previous managers, even though I can go back to the days when I was catching bags of peanuts in the old west stand paddock as Gordon Lee sat in the dugout.
I also don’t want Eddie Howe to escape any judgment because he is a top bloke, same as winning silverware should not warrant him being spared constructive criticism.
The big issue though with many fans, me included, is his reticence to change formation. A holding midfielder, big Nick at no.10 just behind Wissa, not relying on a “play when I fancy it” Anthony Gordon.
I said at the height of the Isak mess in August that this could derail the coming season, no matter what players we get in, the fall out of it all and its effects unknown.
We all want the same.
We all wanna hear the same click when it starts to flow again.
But more than anything, I want the current best English manager to stay and be given more time, especially when we have the structure in place above him now to build again.
These are tough times, frustrating times, but times we have seen before, except maybe for some “new fans” amongst us.
Keep the Faith.