Eddie Howe

[gbandit]

Just now, The Prophet said:

 

 

We absolutely should be competing, but it's not a guarantee, as Man United, Spurs and Chelsea have shown in recent seasons despite spending far more.

 

I'm still pretty confident we'll be there and there abouts, plus cup runs will have an impact, but Howe should have more than enough credit in the bank to survive a season outside the European spots.

Let’s settle for winning the league cup again or the Champions League for our route into Europe. I’ll take the latter. Fuck the league off good and early while prioritising some international silverware

[El Prontonise]

1 minute ago, The Prophet said:

 

 

We absolutely should be competing, but it's not a guarantee, as Man United, Spurs and Chelsea have shown in recent seasons despite spending far more.

 

I'm still pretty confident we'll be there and there abouts, plus cup runs will have an impact, but Howe should have more than enough credit in the bank to survive a season outside the European spots.

 

I think the issue could get into consistency where he can't deliver it consistently.

[Guest]

37 minutes ago, Ronaldo said:

We’ve beaten two sides in Europe who woudn’t survive in the PL and another (at home) who are currently below Betis and Espanol. I’m not encouraged by it when we then play average to poor PL sides and can’t threaten.

 

Fair point sir

[toontownman]

Fair chance we get relegated if we sack Howe imo. 

 

Just dont see it happening. He is flirting with them casting more than a skeptical eye with league form though. Next 3 league games are far from easy. Pressure will start amping up in the press soon enough. 

[Erikse]

"With Dan's height being pivotal from the set plays and with Joelinton going off, we suddenly would have become very small. So, they're big calls to make. "With hindsight, you'd possibly make a different decision."

 

Not sure about this. Yes, it's hindsight, but how many set pieces will realistically happen in the last 30 min, and what are the chances that having 1 less tall guy in those few really ends up mattering? We still have Botman, Thiaw and Wolte out there. Several teams in the league play with just 2-3 really tall players every game and don't worry too much about it.

 

 

Edited November 9, 2025 by Erikse

[El Prontonise]

4 minutes ago, toontownman said:

Fair chance we get relegated if we sack Howe imo. 

 

[SAK]

1 minute ago, Andy said:

 

You may be right in the long term, but he's also enjoying the benefit of that success at the moment, so it works both ways. Any other manager at almost any club would be under serious pressure after the league performances this season; they aren't just bad performances by Eddie's standards, they are bad performances by any metric. 

 

Eddie deserves that patience of course, but you're right that the credit he has won't last forever. I'm not sure fans will turn on him en masse if we don't get European football, but if we're consistently this poor and showing no signs of improvement by the end of the season then questions will likely be asked. 

He needs to more ruthless with selections. No to Burn at LB (CB is fine), Ramsdale ahead of Pope, Kraft solid if unspectacular ahead of Trippier who keeps giving the ball

away until Tino is back, Joelinton on the bench Miley or Ramsey ahead of him.
 

Credit goes so far and I hope he snaps

out if it but ultimately the best interests of the club comes ahead of loyalty to any individual. 

[HawK]

Premier League :

 

Watching Woltemade is like imagining watching Berbatov trying to play well up front for Wimbledon '95 or Stoke in the 2010s. It's just not going to happen with how the team is asked to play. I saw him more than once ask our team to slow it down with massively exaggerated hand gestures today.

 

We have zero patience in possession and our build up play is non-existent.  All we have is sit deep to defend with no press in our half and hope for a counter on transition or bust.

 

But then, the kicker is we work it out to the left as our defence deals with the most basic of presses into Burn who has no nous on the ball, it's like watching Dummett get passed to who could only kick up the line in panic. Okay Burn is a bit ahead of Dummett in that regard but you get the picture. If it goes the other way to Trippier, it never goes through the middle, it'll only go over the top or down the line.

 

We have Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro fucking Tonali in our midfield and we can't figure out how to pass them the ball? It's shape, it's tactics, it's patterns of play. It's instructions. Sorry, it's on Howe and I don't see him evolving over night.

 

Elanga was 100% a Howe signing, an analyst or director of football worth their salt could tell you he was not the player we needed and we overpaid massively for someone that has all the qualities of Gordon but worse at everything.

 

Champions League :

 

Been said to death, the PL is tougher than this comp now bar the big hitters. Our style is like the rock to everyone else's scissors. The CL position is the 'what about' counter to any Howe criticism currently.

 

Transfers : 

 

2 years I've been complaining about us only buying kick-and-run players for the wings. Why weren't we in for Grealish? Granted he got injured early doors but you saw what Isco did for Betis vs Chelsea in the club world cup final, we could have had him for peanuts as they were desperate to raise funds to sign Antony. I'm fed up of saying 'well he's not a Howe player so we won't be signing him'. 

 

Not even touching on rotation and squad management. If his one strategy is Intensity, explain how you're going to press like dogs for 90 minutes every game across 4 competitions if you don't even rotate your bloody team. Why does it all seem so obvious?

 

Final thoughts :

 

Eddie is a club legend, we're not going down, but the impact of not even seemingly capable of challenging for Europe is going to put question marks on several of our best players for the summer window and it's that long term damage I'm worried about more than anything.

 

If we were evidently trying our best and we were missing chances and the ref was out to get us - fair. But it's the repeated mistakes with no answer that's so frustrating. We have one plan and teams are wise to us now.  We can only hope but there's just no signs of improvement at the moment.

[HawK]

I said I'd post after I slept but I've had a few, sorry

[Scoot]

100% faith in this legend to turn it around.

 

Eddie Howe’s black and white army.

[mouldy_uk]

Not sure about the pressure. I think he has such a lot of credit with the fans and even the press (most speak highly of him), that he will be given more time than most. Not sure many teams would be operating at full capacity with potentially their main goal scorer yet to play and two of the best young fullbacks in the league out injured. 
 

I thought there were promising signs at the start of the season of him rotating more than previous years, but today seemed a backwards step. There is no way you can compete on 3 (soon to be 4), fronts, with your starting 11 plus a couple of favoured subs. Players like Bruno and Gordon just aren’t the same level of player when they look tired. 

Overall I desperately want Eddie to turn us around as I want him more than anyone to take us to the next level. I think he’s earned our loyalty for the foreseeable future  

[huss9]

still fucking fuming with him.

today was such an important game.

[Lucky]

The annoying thing is the rat will be looking at this and thinking he was keeping the team well above its station.

 

I’m sure Howe would have played Wissa far more than Woltemade up to this point in the season, but how he’ll affect the team is purely guesswork at this point. Howe hasn’t even had a training session with him and I’m not expecting miracles from his first 5-10 games for us.

 

That’s at least half the season over by then.

 

Unless we really plummet down the table more, I don’t see a point in changing anything mid season but I have no faith in letting Howe spend money on his targets in January.

 

I think we should go big on a world class manager to come in next summer. It would give the players a boost if we miss out on Europe and might give us a chance of holding onto certain players should we not be able to provide European competition.

[Vinny Green Balls]

28 minutes ago, TRon said:

 

 

I'm including this season as well. This is just my impression, I haven't gone through every game, but it feels like our good performances are little patches then we revert to the disjointed stuff. 

Just pointing out that one of our best runs was after the cup final. It wasn’t patchy. We gave ourselves a mountain to climb in October-early December and those two runs got us into the CL. 6-1-3 was our last ten games. Maybe a little luck involved with two wins late later on. Our last 3 games almost knocked us out of the CL though. Overall we were quite good from the cup final up until the last five games or so.

[gbandit]

1 minute ago, huss9 said:

still fucking fuming with him.

today was such an important game.

He fucked it, but he’ll be fuming more than anyone else 

[Kid Icarus]

I said it last year but I think it's worth repeating because the same applies now even more so and we do have a tendency to not be able to see beyond our own noses.

 

One of the problems Howe has at the moment is that he still doesn't have the high level kudos to make people look elsewhere when things go downhill just yet. 

 

I said the above last year, pre-EFL Cup win, so it's improved a bit for him, but that aside his brilliant achievements are still quite intangeable and modest compared to others. 

 

Guardiola and Emery had that advantage in their poor spells, Rafa had it with us, Klopp had it in 22/23. They have the CVs to ward off fingers being widely pointed at them and the reasonable assumption is that the problems lie elsewhere - be it era transitioning, injuries, scouting, recruitment etc.

 

Any of the above in the same situation as Howe now (which we shouldn't forget, they have been, albeit a couple of them in much more first world problems terms where PSR doesnt exist) and they get every benefit of any doubt, rightly so.

 

Guardiola, last season in-particular had it and even now they're nowhere near the levels they've reached and are still in transition. Even in seasons they won, they still had things like a long-standing record of never winning when Rodri didn't play, or making selection and tactical decisions in big knockout games that were seen as him overthinking things

 

Likewise Klopp in his last 2 seasons when it was clear that team was coming to an end and they needed a refresh had it despite them playing rubbish.

 

I'm not saying Howe is Guardiola or Klopp, but we are a team in transition, not just because of the amount of player turnover, but because we've completely changed our attacking focal point. It's going to take time to get it right and I have every confidence that Howe will.

[McDog]

1 minute ago, Lucky said:

The annoying thing is the rat will be looking at this and thinking he was keeping the team well above its station.

 

I’m sure Howe would have played Wissa far more than Woltemade up to this point in the season, but how he’ll affect the team is purely guesswork at this point. Howe hasn’t even had a training session with him and I’m not expecting miracles from his first 5-10 games for us.

 

That’s at least half the season over by then.

 

Unless we really plummet down the table more, I don’t see a point in changing anything mid season but I have no faith in letting Howe spend money on his targets in January.

 

I think we should go big on a world class manager to come in next summer. It would give the players a boost if we miss out on Europe and might give us a chance of holding onto certain players should we not be able to provide European competition.

 

 

That guy that hasn't done a fucking thing this year? If that is what he thinks his mother may have dropped him on a his head as a newborn.

[Vinny Green Balls]

Just now, Lucky said:

The annoying thing is the rat will be looking at this and thinking he was keeping the team well above its station.

 

I’m sure Howe would have played Wissa far more than Woltemade up to this point in the season, but how he’ll affect the team is purely guesswork at this point. Howe hasn’t even had a training session with him and I’m not expecting miracles from his first 5-10 games for us.

 

That’s at least half the season over by then.

 

Unless we really plummet down the table more, I don’t see a point in changing anything mid season but I have no faith in letting Howe spend money on his targets in January.

 

I think we should go big on a world class manager to come in next summer. It would give the players a boost if we miss out on Europe and might give us a chance of holding onto certain players should we not be able to provide European competition.

Like Mourinho? Good luck in finding one who will come, especially with PSR restraints..  And what would really give them a boost is if they knew Howe was a dead man walking until the summer. Maybe they should see how we do instead and then decide in the summer.

 

Can we try to be more realistic here?

 

 

 

[The College Dropout]

26 minutes ago, SAK said:

We can bitch all day about cartel clubs but our budget far exceeds the likes of Bournemouth, Brighton and Brentford et al, teams we should be beating.

They aren’t playing 8 extra fixtures at an elite level.  
 

I didn’t think we did good enough in the summer. I said we could finish 8th without complaints.  Squad is bang average outside a small core. 

[TRon]

2 minutes ago, Vinny Green Balls said:

Just pointing out that one of our best runs was after the cup final. It wasn’t patchy. We gave ourselves a mountain to climb in October-early December and those two runs got us into the CL. 6-1-3 was our last ten games. Maybe a little luck involved with two wins late later on. Our last 3 games almost knocked us out of the CL though. Overall we were quite good from the cup final up until the last five games or so.

 

 

Our next two games after the international break are against Man City at home and then Everton away. We are going to need to go on one hell of a run again this season to get back in the CL next time round. I am just not a fan of leaving ourselves a mountain to climb even if we did it last time round. 

[Vinny Green Balls]

2 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

I said it last year but I think it's worth repeating because the same applies now even more so and we do have a tendency to not be able to see beyond our own noses.

 

One of the problems Howe has at the moment is that he still doesn't have the high level kudos to make people look elsewhere when things go downhill just yet. 

 

I said the above last year, pre-EFL Cup win, so it's improved a bit for him, but that aside his brilliant achievements are still quite intangeable and modest compared to others. 

 

Guardiola and Emery had that advantage in their poor spells, Rafa had it with us, Klopp had it in 22/23. They have the CVs to ward off fingers being widely pointed at them and the reasonable assumption is that the problems lie elsewhere - be it era transitioning, injuries, scouting, recruitment etc.

 

Any of the above in the same situation as Howe now (which we shouldn't forget, they have been, albeit a couple of them in much more first world problems terms where PSR doesnt exist) and they get every benefit of any doubt, rightly so.

 

Guardiola, last season in-particular had it and even now they're nowhere near the levels they've reached and are still in transition. Even in seasons they won, they still had things like a long-standing record of never winning when Rodri didn't play, or making selection and tactical decisions in big knockout games that were seen as him overthinking things

 

Likewise Klopp in his last 2 seasons when it was clear that team was coming to an end and they needed a refresh had it despite them playing rubbish.

 

I'm not saying Howe is Guardiola or Klopp, but we are a team in transition, not just because of the amount of player turnover, but because we've completely changed our attacking focal point. It's going to take time to get it right and I have every confidence that Howe will.

I think we are in a bit of the FM era as well. Whenever things get patchy, posters demand that the foundation be uprooted.

[Erikse]

12 minutes ago, HawK said:

Premier League :

 

Watching Woltemade is like imagining watching Berbatov trying to play well up front for Wimbledon '95 or Stoke in the 2010s. It's just not going to happen with how the team is asked to play. I saw him more than once ask our team to slow it down with massively exaggerated hand gestures today.

 

We have zero patience in possession and our build up play is non-existent.  All we have is sit deep to defend with no press in our half and hope for a counter on transition or bust.

 

But then, the kicker is we work it out to the left as our defence deals with the most basic of presses into Burn who has no nous on the ball, it's like watching Dummett get passed to who could only kick up the line in panic. Okay Burn is a bit ahead of Dummett in that regard but you get the picture. If it goes the other way to Trippier, it never goes through the middle, it'll only go over the top or down the line.

 

We have Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro fucking Tonali in our midfield and we can't figure out how to pass them the ball? It's shape, it's tactics, it's patterns of play. It's instructions. Sorry, it's on Howe and I don't see him evolving over night.

 

Elanga was 100% a Howe signing, an analyst or director of football worth their salt could tell you he was not the player we needed and we overpaid massively for someone that has all the qualities of Gordon but worse at everything.

 

Champions League :

 

Been said to death, the PL is tougher than this comp now bar the big hitters. Our style is like the rock to everyone else's scissors. The CL position is the 'what about' counter to any Howe criticism currently.

 

Transfers : 

 

2 years I've been complaining about us only buying kick-and-run players for the wings. Why weren't we in for Grealish? Granted he got injured early doors but you saw what Isco did for Betis vs Chelsea in the club world cup final, we could have had him for peanuts as they were desperate to raise funds to sign Antony. I'm fed up of saying 'well he's not a Howe player so we won't be signing him'. 

 

Not even touching on rotation and squad management. If his one strategy is Intensity, explain how you're going to press like dogs for 90 minutes every game across 4 competitions if you don't even rotate your bloody team. Why does it all seem so obvious?

 

Final thoughts :

 

Eddie is a club legend, we're not going down, but the impact of not even seemingly capable of challenging for Europe is going to put question marks on several of our best players for the summer window and it's that long term damage I'm worried about more than anything.

 

If we were evidently trying our best and we were missing chances and the ref was out to get us - fair. But it's the repeated mistakes with no answer that's so frustrating. We have one plan and teams are wise to us now.  We can only hope but there's just no signs of improvement at the moment.

 

I agree with most, apart from the point about squad management. He has actually rotated a bit this time around, but now we aren't really pressing much or playing with much intensity. That's part of the problem I feel, because I don't think Howe has ever made his team play in a vastly different way to the high intensity/high pressing one? Certainly not in the context of adapting to managing a high game load atleast. To me it seems like he is struggling to make a new style work with this set of players.

 

 

Edited November 9, 2025 by Erikse

[Vinny Green Balls]

Just now, TRon said:

 

 

Our next two games after the international break are against Man City at home and then Everton away. We are going to need to go on one hell of a run again this season to get back in the CL next time round. I am just not a fan of leaving ourselves a mountain to climb even if we did it last time round. 

I’m not either. It’s what has frustrated me about Howe’s patterns. The Bournemouth dude did warn us about this, an his runs tend to be pretty epic, so there’s that.

 

on the bright side, we are favored to at least make the CL playoffs for the lockout round. And We are in another cup qf. Point out the opposition, fine.  But we are still competing on a number of fronts.

[Geordie Magpie]

 

Not saying Eddie should be sacked as I don't think he should be our away form will be his downfall at one point

[McDog]

2 minutes ago, Vinny Green Balls said:

I’m not either. It’s what has frustrated me about Howe’s patterns. The Bournemouth dude did warn us about this, an his runs tend to be pretty epic, so there’s that.

 

on the bright side, we are favored to at least make the CL playoffs for the lockout round. And We are in another cup qf. Point out the opposition, fine.  But we are still competing on a number of fronts.

 

 

Yep, there are clear positives but man, the league performance this year has been just brutal. Injuries playing a part but today Howe fucked it up. Guy is smart and driven so Eddie lad, set it straight.