When Eddie Howe turned on the television for the first time in the house he now rents with his wife and three sons in a leafy suburb of Newcastle, he noticed a Netflix account belonging to the former occupant.
‘It was there on the screen, “Al’s” Netflix,’ he recalls. ‘I just thought, “Oh, the last owner was called ‘Al’.” It was only then someone told me it was Alan Shearer! I did not dare go back in and check what he had been watching!’
Howe and the club’s record goalscorer have since laughed about their inadvertent piece of transfer business.