Eddie Howe

[Colos Short and Curlies]

8 minutes ago, Coffee_Johnny said:

Well the 'over performing now regressed to the mean/norm' theory needs to take into account a season and half of over performance. From January to May 2022 we amassed 2 points per game. Incredible given we'd only picked up 11 points from the first 19 games.  It obviously needs to take into account a full season leading to a 4th place finish and should somehow take in the better performances this season.

Which kind of stretches the believability a little. Perhaps we're just having a bad spell and our norm, with current squad, is more top six territory. 

there’s another part to that in that maybe Eddies strength is in taking a club at rock bottom and building it up, but then isn’t the one who sustains and adds the cherry.

 

they are different skill sets and have different pressures. People often say a Mourinho or Ancellotti wouldn’t do well at a Bournemouth, and they are probably right but they are 2 of the best at managing the big clubs 

[The Prophet]

1 hour ago, Theregulars said:

But how many reasons are within the club or manager’s control?! Hall transfer looks weird but even then maybe it’s genuinely one for the future. 

 

I agree, but it's hard to judge the quality or fit of the signings. On paper you can see the thinking though.

 

 

Edited February 28 by The Prophet

[TRon]

1 hour ago, The College Dropout said:

Where has it been discredited?

 

Injuries and injury management are a part of football. That excuse doesn't remove accountability (and that is wider than Howe).

 

Our wage bill is £50m+ more than West Ham, Brighton and Wolves. That's the combined salary of Isak, Bruno, Botman, Trippier, Pope, Tonali and more. Finishing below all 3 (and Chelsea) would be a bad season. We finished 12th under Bruce.  I don't think that will happen though. I reckon we'll win 6 out of 8 or something by the end of the season.

 

 

Injuries are part and parcel of football, but when you lose half your squad, and they are all key players, citing the 7th highest wage bill is a bit ingenuous.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

I don’t think there is any way to make us reliably good with the midfield we have now. 
 

We could change system maybe, but then you’d have to offset the disadvantage of training everyone in the ‘wrong’ system for however many weeks. 
 

If you can somehow keep Longstaff, Murphy and Burn out of the team then most of the technical problems and losing the ball should be improved. But then you still have the massive defensive weaknesses that our midfield personnel have. 
 

Honestly haven’t a clue what I would do. Possibly play Anderson and Willock and tell them both not to attack at the same time. Fill Trippier into midfield and play Miggy to add extra defensive work. 

 

 

Edited February 28 by AyeDubbleYoo

[Away Toon]

20 hours ago, Big Jow said:

 

I’m not judging him on it, which is why I said I’d prefer to know the answers before making assumptions or judgements.

 

I’d be concerned if there was truth to the McTominay and Phillips rumours being led by Howe as they are exactly the opposite of what we need. The wider point is about chasing expensive but poor signings based on PL or British experience. If this was the case I don’t think we’ll progress like we want to because we’ll constantly overpay for players when FFP is already hampering our efforts. Hence why, if it was true, I’d have question marks over Howe in that regard.

 

However, as I said, we don’t and won’t know, so it blurs the lines as to whether it’s a genuine concern and therefore makes it impossible to judge.

A fit, motivated playing well  player like Phillips is exactly what we need.

[TRon]

5 minutes ago, KaKa said:

From the match I saw last night Bruno was playing in midfield alone, fighting for his life and taking on all responsibility.

 

Willock tried a few things but just isn't anywhere near sharp enough yet, and so was mostly absent. Longstaff's form has completely fallen of a cliff and he might as well have been playing for Blackburn at times. Miley tried when he came on but wasn't able to have any impact.

 

This is affecting both our attack and our defence at the moment as the midfield is not building up play well enough to create enough for the forwards, and at the same time is not protecting the defence either.

 

All this talk of playing a strong team is good and all, but it really isn't translating on the pitch at the minute. I don't know how we can rectify this with the state Longstaff and Willock are in currently.

 

Wolves have been looking full of energy lately and have been playing well. They are brutal in transition.

 

I'm not looking forward to the game at all.

 

 

 

 

 

I saw it like this as well. There was a lot of criticism of Bruno in the match thread, but from where I was sitting, he was trying to get a hold of the game single-handedly, everyone else was either hiding or getting overwhelmed by Blackburn's energy.

 

Agree also on the Wolves game, said as much in that pre-match thread.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

2 minutes ago, TRon said:

 

Injuries are part and parcel of football, but when you lose half your squad, and they are all key players, citing the 7th highest wage bill is a bit ingenuous.

It’s ludicrous. 
 

Any post that starts ‘we’ve had loads of injuries but…’ should just be ignored TBH. 

[The College Dropout]

4 minutes ago, TRon said:

 

Injuries are part and parcel of football, but when you lose half your squad, and they are all key players, citing the 7th highest wage bill is a bit ingenuous.

One of the teams above is Chelsea. And there’s a £50m+ gap between us and the other teams sitting above us btw.  
 

Thats the full picture of the finances.  

[Shearergol]

1 hour ago, The College Dropout said:

Tonali - can argue all day about if they should've known. Spending so much money on one player is always a massive risk. 

Barnes - think we should've got a creative RW.  Still expect to be a good signing.

Tino - great signing on paper.. needed more buy-in from the manager IMO

Hall - well..

 

There's lots of ways the window could've gone. Could've tried spreading funds more. 

 

Mine is Kieran Maguire. Look him up on X. I've shared the precise post elsewhere on the board.

 

He uses clubs latest public financial accounts. Most haven't been released for 2023.

 

What's your source?

 

 

 

Spotrac mainly, but ever other site that talks about wages also has us 9th or 10th. I'll have a look at Kieran Maguire's though, I wonder why he's the only analyst using the actual accounts.

 

[Dr Venkman]

2 hours ago, The College Dropout said:

Agreed. That's how this forum is - someone is either the best thing in the world or the worst. No in-between.

 

 

I might come across as a major Howe critic but I'm not. I just don't see him as infallible and I think he's made several mistakes and decisions. As well as some great ones. I also think other decision-makers at the club got things wrong in the summer.

 

Alternatively, the majority of people fall in to the 'in-between' space, and a few of them think you put across poor arguments, and tell you so. 

[huss9]

30 minutes ago, AyeDubbleYoo said:

I don’t think there is any way to make us reliably good with the midfield we have now. 
 

We could change system maybe, but then you’d have to offset the disadvantage of training everyone in the ‘wrong’ system for however many weeks. 
 

If you can somehow keep Longstaff, Murphy and Burn out of the team then most of the technical problems and losing the ball should be improved. But then you still have the massive defensive weaknesses that our midfield personnel have. 
 

Honestly haven’t a clue what I would do. Possibly play Anderson and Willock and tell them both not to attack at the same time. Fill Trippier into midfield and play Miggy to add extra defensive work. 

 

 

 

never even close to our first choice midfield but we've had no choice for ages.

it'll change over the coming weeks.

[The College Dropout]

15 minutes ago, Shearergol said:

Spotrac mainly, but ever other site that talks about wages also has us 9th or 10th. I'll have a look at Kieran Maguire's though, I wonder why he's the only analyst using the actual accounts.

 

Probably because actual accounts will be out of date with reality. These are 22/23 accounts I believe and others are still on 21/22. https://x.com/KieranMaguire/status/1762492809121280064?s=20

 

But it's the most accurate data available.

[Dr Venkman]

1 hour ago, Hanshithispantz said:

Dan Burn let slip the 'phase of play' they practiced a while back, said something along the lines of "was that routine 3?" before Howe cut him off. It looked like a standard pass and move to the untrained eye, which we all have.

 

My guess would be that we spend a significant ammount of time working on patterns of play, hence our ease of making it into the opponents box when on form (our 'touches in opponents box' was always really high, along with our xG).

 

 

 

 

The phrase he used was 'was that pattern #'?. And yeah, there's been some stuff published on EH focussing a lot on muscle memory for how the players move when the ball is in certain parts of the pitch, through repetition.

[TRon]

32 minutes ago, The College Dropout said:

One of the teams above is Chelsea. And there’s a £50m+ gap between us and the other teams sitting above us btw.  
 

Thats the full picture of the finances.  

 

It's not the full picture of the injuries though, unless the teams above us also have the same percentage of their top ranking players out through injury.

[Kid Icarus]

1 hour ago, AyeDubbleYoo said:

Another weird opinion

 

It's the best and most relatable opinion I've ever read from TCD tbh. Finally something to agree on

[Theregulars]

1 hour ago, Dokko said:

 

It's performances rather than position. It breeds confidence and feel good. All that's out the window atm. If we're performing well with an optimistic future, then that'll be enough. We've seen he can ride a wave, this is the test of coming back from the crash. He couldn't turn it around at Bournemouth and looked spent. He's not there with us, he's still fighting, but his team doesn't look interested, with zero organisation.

 

Also, sometimes a manager just stops working for a team, leaves and goes on to do well somewhere else. Sometimes clubs and them need a change as do the players.

 

I don't know what the answer is, no one can really say why everything has fell apart so quickly, and no one can safely say he can turn it around or when he'll get it all back on track. We have to remember this is the highest he's been. 1 season of Europe, no trophies. It's all new territory with him, but I expected him to learn on the job, but it's just getting worse.

 

I'm glad we beat the mackems. I said it's the only thing I wanted this season and he can do what he wants and I'm still there, it's just sad now this is still going on and I'm still seeing fatigue from 6 games being used as an excuse.  

I’m not sure how you can watch us play and conclude that the team don’t look interested. 

[The College Dropout]

13 minutes ago, TRon said:

 

It's not the full picture of the injuries though, unless the teams above us also have the same percentage of their top ranking players out through injury.

Every team has injuries man. Man U are missing their first-choice CB, LB and 2 starting CMs for most of the season. They have the 4th highest wage bill. No matter the injuries, the court cases, the disrespect.. anything less than 4th maybe 5th is a proper underperformance by the whole organisation.

 

i think I said at the start of the season - with some bad luck with injuries we might be down to 7-8. I think that's fair. Good luck with fitness and continued momentum we would be 4-6th, closer to 6th considering Europe. Because I believe our manager is excellent, the squad is motivated and aligned and our recruitment is superior. Once you start going 9th, 10th, 11th... it's a bad season. Some of the factors i believe... you have to question if they hold true. Injuries contribute but there's an underlying underperformance from the squad, management and leadership. 

 

Every other team will work on the same basis.

 

 

Edited February 28 by The College Dropout

[AyeDubbleYoo]

Man Utd have been bad TBF. 

[The College Dropout]

1 minute ago, AyeDubbleYoo said:

Man Utd have been bad TBF. 

And recently... so have we.

[Lush Vlad]

Do other fanbases HOUND™️ their managers out quite like ours? 
 

I feel like he has had a few flaws and blind spots this season. But I’d say most managers do. He’s also been dealt consistently shit hands at every turn. 

The performances haven’t been great and there are some baffling things where most fans seem to be in unison on. But fuck me. I can’t quite believe how quickly we have turned on him. 
 

Loads on social media wanting him gone. Plenty of thinly veiled posts on here making it clear enough they want him replaced. 
 

Seems like everyone has got fed up of the perfectly reasonable injuries excuse and in turn, the ‘fatigue’ (NO™️) discussion and lack of rotation. So they’ve now just concluded that Howe isn’t good enough and he probably won’t turn it around. 
 

One season back up in the big time and we’ve become what the media have always said we are…..

[Away Toon]

I think that's the worst I've seen us play under Howe last night, there wasn't one thing we did well as a team . There are less and less mitigating circumstances. We do not look like a well coached team.

[worthy]

1 hour ago, RS said:

The constant huge gap between midfield and defence not being addressed is a massive concern. We look visibly slower at closing down than we were at the beginning of the season as well. 
I wonder  if Howe drops Barnes (or even livramento) in to close the gap that encourages the opposition to run straight through midfield at us. He needs to do something to resolve this obvious issue

He hasnt done it for two seasons. It’s been a problem ever since he decided on his 4-3-3 without a DM or anyone in the ilk to slot back there to protect the space between defense and midfield. 

[Scoot]

3 minutes ago, Away Toon said:

I think that's the worst I've seen us play under Howe last night, there wasn't one thing we did well as a team . There are less and less mitigating circumstances. We do not look like a well coached team.

 

I take it you didn't see us at Arsenal on Saturday?

[TRon]

13 minutes ago, AyeDubbleYoo said:

Man Utd have been bad TBF. 

 

They've also been worse the more injuries they have suffered. If Hojlund is out for a few weeks would anyone fancy them to continue winning games at the same rate as previously?

 

It's too glib to say all teams have injuries. If you have more injuries and to more key players than your rivals, then you will suffer worse results.

[Theregulars]

I think a lot of it is football being a game of such fine margins. When your confidence is high and momentum with you, things seem to “go your way” - I reckon there’s a psychology to it: taking risks, feeling energised, truly believing and trusting in something so there’s no doubt about what you’re going to do. It then seems like you’re winning the margins.
 

That momentum and confidence is so easily interrupted by circumstances; it’s so delicate - then you don’t win as much at the margins because you’re not taking risks or believing and don’t have that going energy. 
 

The end outcome is massive because it’s such an intensely competitive game. So I don’t even think it’s “over” or “under” achieving; just more circumstances have favoured and then not favoured us and we’ve had and not had momentum. 

 

I can therefore only remain of the opinion that there’s so much supervening and extenuating circumstance to this season - not to write it off; I think below 7th and no silverware would be disappointing and below my own ambitions. 
 

The nature of those extenuating circumstances also means their impact is still being felt now. 
 

Maybe it is a flaw in how he trains and plays, maybe other teams have had time to counter and plan, maybe we just really benefitted from few injuries and more coaching time, maybe it’s a bit of everything… I just don’t see much of a plausible argument that he should take more than a small amount of blame.

 

I think the comparisons with Manchester United are also weird: they have a much larger squad and much more financial resource / pulling power / (IMO) corrupting power.