Eddie Howe

[The College Dropout]

13 minutes ago, timeEd32 said:

The problem I have with this whole debate is it kind of glosses over two things:

 

1) Players were forced to play earlier because of freak injuries, so you can still point to bad luck.
 

If Tonali (Ashworth MI5 blame aside), Anderson, or Longstaff had been available at various points then Joelinton gets more time. If Barnes and Murphy are fit then Gordon could a) rest and b) give Wilson and Isak more time.
 

2) The logical conclusion if you say we should have still not brought them back is that would have been effectively conceding games along the way.

 

I would have been ok with us doing that at Spurs given what came before and Milan after. But I also know what this thread would have looked like if we got embarrassed with a glorified U23 side.

 

And one game wouldn’t have been enough. So what else are you giving up? 
 

- 3 points against Man United? “Why are we giving points to a rival?”

- Risking Fulham at home? “Losing every game in a month is inexcusable”

- The LC at Chelsea “Eddie’s throwing away trophies. It’s the Ashley era all over.”

- The derby? “He just doesn’t get it. Eddie out.”

 

The fact is only winning every game prevents moaning about something.

1) This is a choice. 

2) By overplaying players in the short term we effectively conceded games in the medium term due to fatigue and injuries. Howe refused to rotate in late November into December and we won 2 out of 11 games as a result. Losing 7 in 8.

 

1 hour ago, GEFAFWISP said:

I don't think it's out the realms of possibility that giving Parkinson, Ndiweni or some other youthful willing runners 15 minutes would help to alleviate at least a small portion of fatigue in games where the result wasn't in the balance. Yes they're not good enough, yes they're nowhere close to Premiership quality but the hand we've been dealt and Howe used was to add slightly further injury risk to the few fit players we have and accumulating a touch more fatigue heading into the next fixture 3 days after, on repeat. Also, if Lewis Hall wasn't thoroughly verboten we might've seen him in CM for 15-20 at the end of games.

 

 

 

Personally - I think there were several games where any warm body would've been better than Alexander Isak for at least 20 minutes. Maybe 45 minutes. When that lad runs out of steam, he can barely move.

 

1 hour ago, Shearergol said:

 

I'm genuinely interested to hear the fan's views on WHICH kid he should have played for a few games instead of Isak or Wilson. I've not seen a great deal of our U23's so which one was the warm body who is at the right level?

Literally any of them. IMO we didn't have the legs to win all games in any block of 3 games. You could either play the same team and get progressively worse performances and results (the Howe approach) or sacrifice one to attack the other 2. Or halfway sacrifice one. That's not Howe's way of thinking.

 

 

It's pure conjecture but this is a very football league mindset. It relies on momentum, belief and toughing it out for it to work. It can work superbly but it can also backfire and lead to slumps in form. Someone like Rafa - managed in Europe for a decade straight - prioritises fitness and sharpness and rotates throughout the season to keep players sharp and fit in crunch periods. Rafa wouldn't have taken the Howe approach not at all.

 

Not to say I want Rafa. Howe is overall the better coach at this point in time and it's not close. However, Howe's inexperience at this level has led to costly mistakes. I don't think any manager with a lot of experience in elite European football takes the Howe approach on fitness and injury.

 

I'm repeating myself so I'm out. 

[The College Dropout]

One last thing actually - personally I didn't think it was possible to challenge for all 4 competitions with a fully fit squad. Much less an injury-hit one. I think we played too strong a team throughout the league cup campaign. I think to try and win every game in every competition with our best team, with our injury crisis was naive. A huge dip in form was inevitable imo.

 

If we were sitting in the League Cup final, I would be eating my words and holding my hands up that I was wrong or at least - it was worth sacrificing league points. But a major part of why we aren't in the final is because we couldn't stop a barrage of Chelsea attacks and eventually killed ourselves due to fatigue.

[Shearergol]

7 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

1) This is a choice. 

2) By overplaying players in the short term we effectively conceded games in the medium term due to fatigue and injuries. Howe refused to rotate in late November into December and we won 2 out of 11 games as a result. Losing 7 in 8.

 

Personally - I think there were several games where any warm body would've been better than Alexander Isak for at least 20 minutes. Maybe 45 minutes. When that lad runs out of steam, he can barely move.

 

Literally any of them. IMO we didn't have the legs to win all games in any block of 3 games. You could either play the same team and get progressively worse performances and results (the Howe approach) or sacrifice one to attack the other 2. Or halfway sacrifice one. That's not Howe's way of thinking.

 

 

It's pure conjecture but this is a very football league mindset. It relies on momentum, belief and toughing it out for it to work. It can work superbly but it can also backfire and lead to slumps in form. Someone like Rafa - managed in Europe for a decade straight - prioritises fitness and sharpness and rotates throughout the season to keep players sharp and fit in crunch periods. Rafa wouldn't have taken the Howe approach not at all.

 

Not to say I want Rafa. Howe is overall the better coach at this point in time and it's not close. However, Howe's inexperience at this level has led to costly mistakes. I don't think any manager with a lot of experience in elite European football takes the Howe approach on fitness and injury.

 

I'm repeating myself so I'm out. 

 

Diallo or Parkinson then. Should we play one of them against Forest then? Which one? 

 

[54]

Howes in a lose/ lose like, as earlier on in the season Howe got criticised by mamy for bring on Matt Ritchie an experienced Premier League player. Now he's getting criticism for not playing players who haven't impressed at Premier League 2 level.

 

Would hate to be a Football manager like

[The College Dropout]

5 minutes ago, Shearergol said:

 

Diallo or Parkinson then. Should we play one of them against Forest then? Which one? 

 

He’s made his bed now, he’s not going to switch it up. And we have gone past the worst of the fixture congestion. I’ve accepted the personnel thing. Now I’m wondering if he sticks to the flat midfield 3 or goes to 5 at the back.   
 

If I’m taking Wilson at his word, he’ll not start until he is actually ready.  

[wormy]

1 hour ago, mondonewc said:

100% yes!

 

What's to worry about? 4th/5th looking very unlikely right now, and I think there's an argument for preferring 8th over 7th since I could see us having a huge season next season without all the added midweek games in Europe. Europe is fun for sure, and it'd be a good chance for a trophy if we come 7th, but hardly going to be devastated if we missed out on 6th/7th and we finish 8th or 9th.

 

Difficult game tmoro but we are clear favourites, hopefully we perform more like the Villa game and less like the reverse fixture against these. 

 

Oh, we got a game, have we? Might check it out. 

[Holmesy]

32 minutes ago, 54 said:

Howes in a lose/ lose like, as earlier on in the season Howe got criticised by mamy for bring on Matt Ritchie an experienced Premier League player. Now he's getting criticism for not playing players who haven't impressed at Premier League 2 level.

 

Would hate to be a Football manager like

Getting paid £5m per year for managing a team playing the game you love. Yeah, sounds wank!

 

[RobS]

I agree with CD here mind, theirs been many a game where from 60 minutes Isak's been barely able to run, offered no tracking back, no movement for options for balls and just offered very little. In those situations i'd rather have a young lad on who can run about a bit than Isak, and all it does it make Isak worse for the next game as well.

 

Howe needs to learn to use what bench he has, even if its poor, more effectively, to take the strain off key people who are not that strong phyisically. 

 

 

Edited February 9, 2024 by RobS

[STM]

3 hours ago, The College Dropout said:

The other route is playing a warm body in place of fatigued players. Yeah we probably lose those games ames (we lost those games anyway btw) but we have players fit and ready to play other games.

 

As I've previously mentioned. Other managers like Rafa would've played boys and started blaming fixture congestion, owners, FFP, the weather, the rules on added minutes etc. I've shared an article on Howe's lack of rotation at Bournemouth during their promotion campaign compared to Rafa's for us. That lack of rotation is a feature of his management, not just a bug caused by injuries. Wilson started all 46 games that season btw. Then his knees exploded for the next 2 years.

 

 

Here lies the problem. Again, I mean this in the most respectful way possible but if Howe takes your reccomended course and loses on the back of it, you are the first person to be critical post match. You won't make any mitigation for having players missing. 

 

You would hammer him for losing and so would plenty of others.

[STM]

43 minutes ago, Holmesy said:

Getting paid £5m per year for managing a team playing the game you love. Yeah, sounds wank!

 

 

Putting up with absolute weapons on message boards trying to tell him how to do a job which he knows much more about is a downside though. 

[mofo]

4 hours ago, thomas said:

Howe's addiction to Dan Burn is heartbreaking. exaggerated

 

[STM]

31 minutes ago, RobS said:

I agree with CD here mind, theirs been many a game where from 60 minutes Isak's been barely able to run, offered no tracking back, no movement for options for balls and just offered very little. In those situations i'd rather have a young lad on who can run about a bit than Isak, and all it does it make Isak worse for the next game as well.

 

Howe needs to learn to use what bench he has, even if its poor, more effectively, to take the strain off key people who are not that strong phyisically. 

 

 

 

 

While this a perfectly sensible take... If its a game where we are drawing or winning and the result goes south because we've brought on some young kid... presumably everyone would give Howe loads of leeway?

 

There are quite a few disingenuous fans trying the old "I would have understood if we lost" patter. No they wouldn't, they would have destroyed him post match.

[The College Dropout]

Just now, STM said:

 

 

Here lies the problem. Again, I mean this in the most respectful way possible but if Howe takes your reccomended course and loses on the back of it, you are the first person to be critical post match. You won't make any mitigation for having players missing. 

 

You would hammer him for losing and so would plenty of others.

No i'm not. Like I said, i didn't think it was possible to successfully attack 4 competitions with our squad. I advocated resting players even against Chelsea at the QF stage. I didn't see how we could play our strongest team there, and then win the more winnable games in the league. And we didn't  

As you say - I can't have it both ways. You either rest some players, risk a bad result or two in the hopes you win many more matches down the line. Considering the small squad and injuries - that is the only sensible option to me. Obviously Howe thought otherwise.

 

I am the first to put my hands up if Howe's plan worked. I didn't criticise him after the Chelsea result.. because it almost worked and the draw would've been kind. It would've been worth losing the next couple in the league IMO which I think it almost guaranteed.

[STM]

1 minute ago, The College Dropout said:

No i'm not. Like I said, i didn't think it was possible to successfully attack 4 competitions with our squad. I advocated resting players even against Chelsea at the QF stage. I didn't see how we could play our strongest team there, and then win the more winnable games in the league. And we didn't  

As you say - I can't have it both ways. You either rest some players, risk a bad result or two in the hopes you win many more matches down the line. Considering the small squad and injuries - that is the only sensible option to me. Obviously Howe thought otherwise.

 

I am the first to put my hands up if Howe's plan worked. I didn't criticise him after the Chelsea result.. because it almost worked and the draw would've been kind. It would've been worth losing the next couple in the league IMO which I think it almost guaranteed.

 

Well OK, you've made your point, it's a fair one. Let's hope the injury situation improves, so that we don't need this discussion again.

[Holmesy]

1 hour ago, STM said:

 

Putting up with absolute weapons on message boards trying to tell him how to do a job which he knows much more about is a downside though. 

True, but small price to pay for financial freedom for the rest of your life.

 

And also, it's very easy to discount how much football fans know about the game of football. Just because we've never played it at professional level doesn't mean we know nothing. There are plenty of professional managers who have never played the game at senior level but have had successful careers. And some that have played at the highest level and know fuck all eg. Steve Bruce. 

Some lad got a professional manager job after doing well on Football Manager FFS! We’re not talking about rocket science here. 
 

Do we know how to set up a training session to best instil a style of play into a team? No.

Do we know how to coach individual players to improve certain aspects of their play? Probably not.

Eddie Howe 100% knows infinitely more about these things than us.

 

Can we spot certain things that consistently aren't working tactically and personnel that aren't performing? Yes, and they are valid observations. What we generally don't take into account is maybe the manager doesn't want to drop a player to keep his morale high, maybe he wants to play him into form etc. Maybe he just has an ultimate preference for a natural left footer in left sided defensive roles or maybe he just really likes certain players as people. These are the bits we fans generally don't take into consideration, but simply discounting how much we know about the game is generalist lazy bullshit - exactly the kind of crap you’d expect to be peddled by the likes of Ray ‘party’ Parlour and other ‘I played the game, therefore I know more than you’ morons. 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 9, 2024 by Holmesy

[The Prophet]

1 hour ago, STM said:

 

While this a perfectly sensible take... If its a game where we are drawing or winning and the result goes south because we've brought on some young kid... presumably everyone would give Howe loads of leeway?

 

There are quite a few disingenuous fans trying the old "I would have understood if we lost" patter. No they wouldn't, they would have destroyed him post match.

 

There's also an underlying assumption that sticking the kids in to rotate a few would have given them sufficient rest and recuperation and seen an uptick in results. 

[TRon]

22 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

 

There's also an underlying assumption that sticking the kids in to rotate a few would have given them sufficient rest and recuperation and seen an uptick in results. 

 

Well that was my argument, less about getting the result, more about protecting our actual match winners.

[The Prophet]

6 minutes ago, TRon said:

 

Well that was my argument, less about getting the result, more about protecting our actual match winners.

 

It's an alternative worthy of debate, but there's absolutely no guarantee it's a successful one or that things would pan out much differently to how they have.

[catlover24]

About the press conference l, just want to say that there’s a difference between being “the biggest fan of Tino” to having the biggest erection for Dan Burn.

[TRon]

3 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

 

It's an alternative worthy of debate, but there's absolutely no guarantee it's a successful one or that things would pan out much differently to how they have.

 

It's just an opinion, but I always prefer resting players and losing the odd game than risking a player breaking down for a longer period. Or making the subs a bit earlier for the same reason. As TCD already pointed out, we ended up losing most of those games anyway.

[Weezertron]

2 hours ago, STM said:

 

Putting up with absolute weapons on message boards trying to tell him how to do a job which he knows much more about is a downside though. 

Not sure he's a member. 

[timeEd32]

17 minutes ago, TRon said:

 

It's just an opinion, but I always prefer resting players and losing the odd game than risking a player breaking down for a longer period. Or making the subs a bit earlier for the same reason. As TCD already pointed out, we ended up losing most of those games anyway.

 

I've said this before, but this is the other problem with a lot of this. The margins are so fine.

 

The week we ran ourselves into the ground we were literally three minutes away from one of our most famous wins ever and we'd almost certainly still be in Europe had we won that game. Someone will respond saying they should have scored 3 or 4, but I don't really care. By hook or by crook we had three points until an awfully questionable penalty.

 

Then we were 30 minutes away from staying in the Champions League anyway, with 20 minutes left prevented from re-taking the lead by a spectacular save that still needed help from the crossbar, and then less than 10 minutes from the Europa League. Maybe that goes differently had we rested against Man United, Everton, or Spurs but we have no idea. And we almost did it anyway.

 

And then @The College Dropout thinks we should have rested in the LC and I'm pretty sure said this without the benefit of hindsight. It's a perfectly reasonable stance. But again we were two minutes from another LC semifinal before an individual error. Very possible we'd be planning another trip to Wembley had that not happened.

 

The fact that all of this went the wrong way makes everything else - Everton, Spurs, Luton, Forest - seem far worse. While not ideal, disappointing league performances would be a lot easier to take with Wembley and/or European knockouts on the horizon.

[TRon]

18 hours ago, timeEd32 said:

 

I've said this before, but this is the other problem with a lot of this. The margins are so fine.

 

The week we ran ourselves into the ground we were literally three minutes away from one of our most famous wins ever and we'd almost certainly still be in Europe had we won that game. Someone will respond saying they should have scored 3 or 4, but I don't really care. By hook or by crook we had three points until an awfully questionable penalty.

 

Then we were 30 minutes away from staying in the Champions League anyway, with 20 minutes left prevented from re-taking the lead by a spectacular save that still needed help from the crossbar, and then less than 10 minutes from the Europa League. Maybe that goes differently had we rested against Man United, Everton, or Spurs but we have no idea. And we almost did it anyway.

 

And then @The College Dropout thinks we should have rested in the LC and I'm pretty sure said this without the benefit of hindsight. It's a perfectly reasonable stance. But again we were two minutes from another LC semifinal before an individual error. Very possible we'd be planning another trip to Wembley had that not happened.

 

The fact that all of this went the wrong way makes everything else - Everton, Spurs, Luton, Forest - seem far worse. While not ideal, disappointing league performances would be a lot easier to take with Wembley and/or European knockouts on the horizon.

 

My recollection in those games was that we performed pretty well for about 75 mins then we started flagging visibly. I can understand that we would be reluctant to change from a winning position, but sometimes you can see some players are out on their feet and that's when you have to make some tough decisions. The PSG game, I agree we were robbed but in some of the others I just think we ran out of legs. Having two keepers on the bench isn't  going to solve that.

[Kanj]

A season of tremendous learning experiences for Howe, his staff, and the club. At this point he’s just got to do the best he can with the injured squad to maximize the league position and attack the FA cup. Come end of season, I imagine a massive deep dive review will occur and hopefully, reflection and lessons learned will lead to change and growth in how we approach next season and the fixture congestion. 
 

I’ll back the brilliant coach we have 100%, even if hindsight and personal opinion differ from what he’s doing. 

[The College Dropout]

55 minutes ago, TRon said:

 

My recollection in those games was that we performed pretty well for about 75 mins then we started flagging visibly. I can understand that we would be reluctant to change from a winning position, but sometimes you can see some players are out on their feet and that's when you have to make some tough decisions. The PSG game, I agree we were robbed but in some of the others I just think we ran out of legs. Having two keepers on the bench isn't  going to solve that.

We were robbed by a bad decision. But the second half we were battered. We could have had no complaints if we conceded 4 or 5.  Pope was magnificent and PSG were awful in front of goal.  But we had no control, defence was committed but porous. Chelsea was the same. 
 

Howe just sits on his hands and hopes for the best. It’s infuriating to watch I’ll be honest.  Wolves was the same for 20-25 minutes. Burn just on toast. Trippier on toast.  Livra sitting in the bench. Time and again he does nothing until we concede.  
 

I wish he was just a little more proactive