Jason Tindall has become one of the most recognizable faces at Newcastle United thanks to his eccentric mannerisms on the touchline. Often criticized for being too much of an ‘attention seeker’ and trying to take the spotlight away from manager Eddie Howe, Tindall has a bigger responsibility than what other Premier League assistant managers have.
The 47-year-old has been at the helm of this role with the Magpies since November 2021. Before that, he had worked alongside Howe as an assistant coach for over twelve years, with the two famously helping Bournemouth move up from League Two to the Premier League in 2015.
Even though he might try to be as influential as Howe in the coaching role, Tindall is strictly considered as his assistant at least in the pecking order in the management structure. On the financial terms, there is a disparity between what the club pays Howe as compared to what Tindall bags on a weekly basis.
Eddie Howe is reportedly paid around £4 million per year (or £72,000-a-week) by the Magpies. Although he guided them the 2023/24 UEFA Champions League and has them fighting for a Premier League top-4 spot this season, he’s not amongst the top-10 highest-paid managers in the division.
Taking that into consideration, it can be easily debated that Tindall probably doesn’t rank among the highest-paid assistant managers in the division. Normally, assistant coaches don’t get paid nearly as much as the manager, but those in the Premier League are normally paid pretty well.
A League Two source spoke about the assistant’s wages to The Athletic, stating: “Managers are well paid, so are a lot of assistants. Most of a club’s support staff aren’t on great wages and they’re at the whim of a manager. Bad performance and you’re in the next day, dropping everything and looking for childcare.”
In 2020, when Covid-19 had a devastating impact on English football and the lower divisions in particular, the Daily Mail managed to reveal some of the amounts earned by assistant and support staff coaches outside of the Premier League. It was claimed that the average salary earned by assistant coaches in the Championship in 2020 was £204,000-a-year. A manager’s average salary, on the other had, was touted to be £808,000-a-year.
Considering that calculation, it’s fair to debate that a Premier League team’s assistant manager earns as much as four times as what a Championship side’s does. If Howe is getting £4 million a year from the Magpies, Tindall should be receiving at least around £1 million a year for his hard work if not more than that. There is a reason why Newcastle can afford to pay him this kind of amount too.
Premier League clubs are obviously richer as they earn huge revenue through television rights, while a Premier League match’s tickets are most expensive than a Championship one too.
For example, the 20th-place side in the 2022/23 Premier League team (Southampton) earned around £103.6 million from broadcasting revenue. Newcastle United, who finished fourth, bagged £164.3 million! The entire broadcast revenue distributed to the 20 Premier League teams that season surpassed over £2.7 billion. In comparison, the revenue for all 23 Championship clubs in that same campaign was £749 million.
The attractiveness of the Premier League and sheer popularity help their clubs earn a whole lot more than those in the lower divisions. As a result, the top division sides also get to pay their personnel larger salaries!
Tindall has never disclosed his financial earnings from Newcastle or the kind of contract he’s signed with them. He’s just there to enjoy being a bit of an annoying figure on the touchline and isn’t afraid of riling up opponents while Howe remains the quiet one.
The Englishman has even spoken about his animated touchline behavior and sparky personality back in the 2023/24 season, stating: “I won’t stop being me all of a sudden because of what people say about me and what they tell me to do. If anyone thinks that’s going to stop me behaving like me or stop me being my real self, that’s not going to happen.
“I don’t mean to get under the skin of opposing managers or deliberately upset anyone. All I’m interested in doing is helping Newcastle United win football matches. I take it all with a pinch of salt. I don’t really take too much notice of what people say and put on social media. That’s part and parcel of doing this type of job where you’re in the spotlight,” he added.
The 47-year-old clearly loves his job as the overly indulged assistant manager at Newcastle United and will continue to redefine how fans look at the gaffer ‘no.2’ for the foreseeable future.
