At 10pm on Sunday night – the end of a long day which changed everything for Newcastle United – Becky Langley was at her desk at Kingston Park, rewatching, reviewing and quietly stewing. Aside from her and a cleaner, the stadium was empty. It had, she said, been a “rollercoaster” day; her team losing, the men winning, her smouldering, the city aflame, a jumble of emotions from which she emerged “back on track and in beast mode”.
A few hours before Eddie Howe’s side beat Liverpool at Wembley, ending their 70-year wait for a domestic trophy, Newcastle Women lost 3-1 away to Durham in the Barclays Women’s Championship. It leaves them seventh of 11 in a division which remains ridiculously cramped (win their two games in hand and they’d be level on points with third-placed Charlton Athletic), reflecting on a season which has swivelled on moments and small margins.
Perhaps reflecting is the wrong word. After one local derby, another follows in short succession for Langley and her players, this time against Sunderland, which is always a brain-scrambler, reliably a sensory overload. With ticket sales already breaking through the 28,000 mark in midweek, a record crowd for a Championship fixture is guaranteed at St James’ Park.
It will also bring Tyneside’s first glimpse of the Carabao Cup, with Darren Eales, Newcastle’s chief executive, and Bob Moncur, captain of the last men’s team to lift a meaningful trophy — the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1969 — on hand to present it to the crowd. There is a symbolism to that, links in the chain and a passing of the baton between generations which reflects the club’s rebirth and unification since the contentious Saudi-led takeover in October 2021.
Come and support the lasses!
To celebrate the @NUFCWomen record-breaking crowd at SJP on Sunday, the Carabao Cup trophy will be making its first public appearance at the derby. Lifted by club legend, Bob Moncur, and CEO, Darren Eales 🏆
Tickets ⤵️
— Newcastle United (@NUFC) March 19, 2025
The women’s team have been at the vanguard. Not too long ago, Newcastle’s women were combining training with full-time jobs and Langley was doing everything, including washing the kits. Now they are officially incorporated into the club, won consecutive promotions and went professional at the start of last season. Their headlong rise has mirrored that of the men’s team, and opened a pathway for girls and young women to play.
Two teams, one club; little wonder last weekend brought such mixed emotions. “Ultimately, there’s pride and excitement in the whole of the club after a fantastic accomplishment by Eddie and his team in winning that cup,” the manager says, and she is grinning. “Personally, I’m really proud of and excited for Eddie and the club’s future and using that as a springboard for what’s next. I’m so happy he’s been the manager able to achieve that silverware.
“Off the back of it, what’s really important for us is that we use that excitement around the cup final and the buzz that’s in the club to help energise us for this game against Sunderland. We can’t wait for it. I’m so excited.”
Here, the smile fades, although the stream of words continues. “I don’t think there will be anyone more disappointed than me last Sunday night in the whole of Newcastle because while being absolutely ecstatic for the club and for Eddie, I was also absolutely devastated with our result against Durham,” Langley says.
While there have been a few too many draws, Newcastle had not been beaten in the league since early November. After two years of sharp growth, their first experience of the second tier has brought fierce competition and a steep learning curve, but last Sunday had begun with positivity.
Becky Langley at St James’ Park, which will host this weekend’s derby (Nigel Roddis/Getty Images)
“Pre-match we were all buzzing,” Langley says. “We went past the Angel of the North and we were feeling everything, all the excitement of the day, we started the game really well, we went 1-0 up and were in control for 15 minutes, then we’ve conceded kind of against the run of play, then we’ve conceded again two minutes later and lost our way. It was a very emotional performance. Durham have got that experience of this level, they know how to disrupt.
“We had our moment after the game to show frustration and anger and then it was going home to be with my friends, family and partner to watch the men’s game. It was strange; on the one hand, I was screaming at the TV when Dan Burn scored. He was a neighbour of mine and I know his mum, so how can you not be overwhelmed for him and the journey he’s been on, the whole club has been on?
“At the same time, as I was watching, it was making me more riled that we didn’t show the same passion against Durham to win the game. Geordies just want a team that tries and gives everything and I think there were moments we questioned that on Sunday. So at 7pm, I went back to work on my own and reviewed and watched our whole game back. My family probably thought I was crazy, but I had to analyse our game with no emotion involved.”
This, of course, is straight from the Howe playbook.
“I was exchanging texts with Eddie, James (Bunce, the performance director) and Paul (Mitchell, the sporting director), and in the meantime I was going through our game,” Langley says. “My rationale was that Sunderland’s staff would be on a long coach journey back from Portsmouth after a 2-1 loss doing all their analysis and I didn’t want to wake up on Monday morning in a less prepared place than them. I needed to ensure no stone had been left unturned.
“By 10pm, it was just me and the cleaner in Kingston Park and he actually said to me, ‘I know Durham means a lot to you but for us, as fans, it doesn’t. What matters is Sunderland’. And that made me twist my mindset back to what really matters in this city. We know how much it means for us to perform.”
And this, of course, is straight from the Tyne-Wear playbook; it means everything.
Newcastle celebrate beating Sunderland at the Stadium of Light in October (George Wood/Getty Images)
Nobody understands this more than Amber-Keegan Stobbs (for the uninitiated, she was named by her father after Kevin Keegan, the former Newcastle player and manager). After being brought up in London, the midfielder came home to captain the team and will lead them out at St James’ in the biggest fixture of all, certainly in terms of heft, noise and atmosphere. She did the same on Wearside in October, a match Newcastle won 2-1.
“I’ve been saying to myself, ‘Keep contained, keep contained’,” she says, “but you’ve got to feel the excitement because it’s just a privilege and a dream. I’d never been to the Stadium of Light as a player or a fan, never got a ticket for a men’s game, so my first time ever there was walking out in a derby I was playing in and now to be doing that here…
“I came to a (men’s) derby here when I was a teenager and honestly though I was going to throw up. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m going to be sick, this is too much’. I just remember that feeling. To be part of it now, making history with all our fans, is amazing. It will be one that I’ll never forget but hopefully with all the ticket sales, it’ll be one that a lot of people will remember for a very long time.”
The Championship is brutal in ferocity and format, given that only one team will be promoted to the Women’s Super League, the top tier. Newcastle are now 12 points behind Birmingham City, the leaders, and matches are running out. It is not where Langley, 29, yearned to be this season, but for all her team’s rapid growth and significant investment on new players, this level represents a significant step upwards.
“We’ve always had that big dream of can we do back-to-back-to-back (promotions) and we’ve not been shy in saying that,” she says. “It would be the first time in history anyone had ever done that, but we’ve also got to be realistic. It’s our first season in the Championship, I’m the youngest manager in the Championship and there’s a lot of learning involved for us and the players.
“We’ve been really passionate about bringing some of our Geordie players on the journey with us and it takes time to adapt and keep levelling up, but because the league has been so inconsistent and teams have taken points off each other, we’ve fancied our chances of really pushing at the top. It’s so hard because you can’t take your focus off the next fixture, but we’ve six games left, we’ll attack every one of them and if we win, who knows.”
Stobbs and Langley at St James’ Park this week (George Caulkin)
With a career that includes spells at Everton, West Ham and Crystal Palace, Stobbs, 32, has rich experience at this level. “If you’d said a couple of years ago we’d be in this position people would be buzzing,” she says. “But with what we demand of ourselves, we’ve had some moments that have let us down. When that happens, we make sure we put things right. It gives us extra bite. I’m proud of the things that we’ve done so far and excited for what’s to come.”
Sunderland at home will be another marker and the presence of the Carabao Cup a source of both delight and motivation. Langley will glance at it and think, “I want that to be us. On March 29, there will be a city-wide celebration to commemorate the men’s achievement, but the whole ethos at Newcastle now is that it will not be the last.
“My dream is win the WSL and win the FA Cup,” Langley says. “I was speaking to a player the other week and I was saying, ‘When we’re in the WSL, am I still going to be as hungry as I am now?’ and she was laughing and saying, ‘Yeah, because when you’re in the WSL you’ll want to win that and then you’ll want to win the Champions League’. It’s just my personalty, that addictive drive to be the best.
“Seeing the men have that celebration and then seeing the trophy, well, yeah, we want to be part of that. We want a slice of silverware and I want it as soon as possible.”
(Top photo: Newcastle United v Portsmouth at St James’ Park last year; by Stu Forster via Getty Images)
