Eddie Howe

[morpeth mag]

Want Eddie to be successful and want him to change. I feel sorry for the Isak situation and the number of games we've played but just as the team has run out of legs so Eddie has run out of ideas.

He needs Wilson to say we are a possession based team as this is how we need to be to achieve the 2030 targets. Eddie can stay or go; but if he stays he needs to adapt.

[Wallsendmag]

4 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

Those figures are wrong, but tbh I don't think it matters. The player trading we did was very much with a view to improve improve the squad, not to make profit.

 

The only players we sold at that time that it was obvious we didn't want to sell and would be difficult to replace/improve upon were Hamman and Domi.

 

We got good fees for players we didn't want: Pistone, Howey, Goma etc.

 

 

 

 

Those are the figures quoted on the transfermarkt site. It's a pretty accurate site.

[Kid Icarus]

4 minutes ago, Wallsendmag said:

 

Those are the figures quoted on the transfermarkt site. It's a pretty accurate site.

For that era nothing beats nufc.com/wiki. Transfermarkt is much more accurate for more recent seasons I think. 

 

Like I say though, I don't think it really matters tbh, we knew the squad needed an overhaul, it wasn't a case of players being sold out from under SBR and then not being backed. We sold the players he wanted to sell and bought the players he wanted to buy. 

 

 

Edited April 14 by Kid Icarus

[Wallsendmag]

5 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

For that era nothing beats nufc.com/wiki. Transfermarkt is much more accurate for more recent seasons I think. 

 

Like I say though, I don't think it really matters tbh, we knew the squad needed an overhaul, it wasn't a case of players being sold out from under SBR and then not being backed. We sold the players he wanted to sell and bought the players he wanted to buy. 

 

 

 

 

He wasn't well backed in those 2 seasons we finished 11th which was my point though.

[Weezertron]

He needs to be here next season. Just so we can be sure. I could see the club sacking him if there’s zero uptick in performance in the last 6 games. 
 

I’d be pretty annoyed at him if he couldn’t get a tune out of this squad. Annoyed because I want him to stay. All the talk about last summer window has absolute merit, but he also has to be better. 

[Kid Icarus]

5 minutes ago, Wallsendmag said:

 

He wasn't well backed in those 2 seasons we finished 11th which was my point though.

But he absolutely was, we signed plenty of players and spent plenty of money. Net spend in the context of whether a manager has been backed or not is meaningless when the manager himself also wanted rid of the players he had.

 

 

Edited April 14 by Kid Icarus

[Wallsendmag]

3 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

But he absolutely was, we signed plenty of players and spent plenty of money. Net spend in the context of whether a manager has been backed or not is meaningless when the manager himself also wanted rid of the players he had.

 

 

 

 

In the 2 seasons we finished 11th he wasn't well backed at all. We spent very little.

[Kid Icarus]

1 minute ago, Wallsendmag said:

 

In the 2 seasons we finished 11th he wasn't well backed at all. We spent very little.

We spent like £25m and £17m...in 00 and 01 that's nowhere near being very little. 

[Wallsendmag]

10 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

We spent like £25m and £17m...in 00 and 01 that's nowhere near being very little. 

 

We spent £25m and received £25m in sales in 2000. Wasn't until '01 we spent some decent money when we brought in Robert, Bellamy and Jenas which moved us from 11th to 4th. He wasn't well backed at all in that summer that led to us finishing 11th.

[Kid Icarus]

4 minutes ago, Wallsendmag said:

 

We spent £25m and received £25m in sales in 2000. Wasn't until '01 we spent some decent money when we brought in Robert, Bellamy and Jenas which moved us from 11th to 4th. He wasn't well backed at all in that summer that led to us finishing 11th.

What we received is meaningless in the context of being backed. SBR also wanted the players we sold gone and all of it was used to buy the players he wanted. That's by definition being backed.

[Wallsendmag]

9 minutes ago, Kid Icarus said:

What we received is meaningless in the context of being backed. SBR also wanted the players we sold gone and all of it was used to buy the players he wanted. That's by definition being backed.

 

Well of course it isn't. If you're selling to buy (and we weren't awash with transfer spends at the time with the stadium development) it's not the same as getting an open chequebook like other clubs have had. He spent pretty little until that splurge in the summer of 2001. Up until then Carl Cort was his big signing and the others were squad fillers as we were pretty thin on numbers.

[Kid Icarus]

55 minutes ago, Wallsendmag said:

 

Well of course it isn't. If you're selling to buy (and we weren't awash with transfer spends at the time with the stadium development) it's not the same as getting an open chequebook like other clubs have had. He spent pretty little until that splurge in the summer of 2001. Up until then Carl Cort was his big signing and the others were squad fillers as we were pretty thin on numbers.

I don't know how else to phrase this.

 

We sold to buy because SBR also wanted to get rid of players that weren't good enough and improve the squad with new players  - that was what we needed at the time. Would spending £25m and keeping the players he wanted rid of be the club backing him more or less?

 

We got quality cheap as well remember, Barnard was free for example. Acuna and Lua Lua were good for the price, and we already had a good core that would carry on to the CL years: Given, Hughes, Dabizas, Speed, Dyer, Solano, Shearer.

 

SBR specifically wanted Carl Cort as well, he talks about it in his autobiography. That he ended up being shit isn't an indication that SBR wasn't backed, particularly as he cost more than Bellamy and only 2.5m less than Robert.

 

 

Edited April 14 by Kid Icarus

[Interpolic]

3 hours ago, Wallsendmag said:

 

Define "good backing". We made a profit of 500k in the transfer market in 99/00 and a net spend of £5m in 00/01 which were the 2 seasons we finished 11th. 

 

His "marquee" signing over those 2 seasons would likely have been Carl Cort.

 

 

 

 

Yeah, Cort was the big one that summer but there was a solid base there too with the likes of Shearer, Speed, Given, Dyer, Solano - all players who ended up being pivotal to his teams. 

 

You might glance at the other signings during that period and think they were left field (Gavilan, Bassedas, LuaLua, Acuña, Cordone) - most or all of these were recommendations from scout Mick Wadsworth.

 

Wadsworth was Robson's mate/contact who he trusted and the club went with it, so there are parallels there with last summer in that we went after players the manager wanted but few of them came off at NUFC. 

 

So this was another form of backing from the board that was rectified later when they cut ties with Wadsworth and gave Robson one last chance with less control over signings. 

 

As for the outgoings and the effect they had on profit and loss, I'd say this was more a reflection on the high turnover of managers and being left with unwanted players, Robson certainly never lost anyone of the calibre of Isak like Howe did. 

 

Nuance eh, inconvenient to overly black and white arguments sometimes innit. 

 

 

Edited April 15 by Interpolic

[TheBrownBottle]

Maybe I’m misremembering but weren’t Robson’s first choices in 2001 Francis Jeffers and Boudewijn Zenden?  We ended up with Bellamy and Robert.

 

He didn’t get his first choices because that isn’t how football works.

[Interpolic]

1 hour ago, Wallsendmag said:

 

Well of course it isn't. If you're selling to buy (and we weren't awash with transfer spends at the time with the stadium development) it's not the same as getting an open chequebook like other clubs have had. He spent pretty little until that splurge in the summer of 2001. Up until then Carl Cort was his big signing and the others were squad fillers as we were pretty thin on numbers.

 

Reminder that Howe has signed no player of note in 4 of the last 5 transfer windows. The only window he did sign players he was forced to play makeshift DOF because the club didn't do the bare minimum of having a functioning structure operating above him. 

 

He also lost his most potent attacker for £130m, plus the likes of Anderson, Minteh and Longstaff. It's because our squad building hasn't been steady and additive that we see such a warped squad now imo. We can't be allowed to have so many windows signing nobody going forward. 

 

 

Edited April 15 by Interpolic

[Zero]

Poor Eddie. Let down by everyone, from the management, the coaches, the scouts, and the players 

[OverThere]

29 minutes ago, Zero said:

Poor Eddie. Let down by everyone, from the management, the coaches, the scouts, and the players 

I blame his nephew, he signed shite.

[Antipode23]

This is how I think I'd sum Eddie up based on his time here.

 

Pros: he cares deeply about the players, the club, everything. He works like a madman. His passion and drive is infectious. I think thats largely why he's had success here. People have bought into it and ridden the wave. Even after only 4-5 years here, he's probably in most people's top 3 all-time NUFC managers, and that's probably quite deserved.

 

Cons: I think deep down, he's actually quite stubborn and narrow minded. Tactically, it's the 433 high energy/high press approach, or as an absolute last resort, 5 at the back, give up the ball and hold on for dear life. I actually think he's afraid to try other approaches, so sticks incessantly to what he knows. Unpopular theory I'm sure.

 

This then follows with his transfer approach. He seems to demand players who are virtually 100% ready to make an impact. If this means paying 40-70m a pop, so be it. I think his rationale is that this reduces risk.  Ironically, you could say it's actually very high risk, in that when even one or two of these transfers don't come off, you're 100m+ in the poo. Then there's the extreme reluctance to play youth, the holding onto players too long, I could go on.

 

For me, the risk-averse theory fits a lot of what we're seeing. Whether that's more due down to ignorance or outright fear on Eddie's part, I don't know. 

 

None of this changes my gratitude towards him however, and desire to see him leave on a good note. I think he deserves that.

[ToonCanuck]

5 hours ago, Kid Icarus said:

Those figures are wrong, but tbh I don't think it matters. The player trading we did was very much with a view to improve improve the squad, not to make profit.

 

The only players we sold at that time that it was obvious we didn't want to sell and would be difficult to replace/improve upon were Hamman and Domi.

 

We got good fees for players we didn't want: Pistone, Howey, Goma etc.

 

And Robson wanted Cort as well, there's no question about that, he mentions it in his autobiography.

 

 

 

 Domi , i liked him. hated to see him go. 

[Interpolic]

2 hours ago, Zero said:

Poor Eddie. Let down by everyone, from the management, the coaches, the scouts, and the players 

 

Would love to know where this bitterness towards one of our best ever managers comes from like, it's absolutely bizarre. 

[Ben]

2 hours ago, Interpolic said:

 

Would love to know where this bitterness towards one of our best ever managers comes from like, it's absolutely bizarre. 

 

Is it bitterness or frustration ? 

 

I love Howe and genuinely hope he stays this summer, but, he does need to adapt his style sometimes to match the players he has or buy players for his style.

 

Everyone at the club made mistakes last summer, changes need to be made, that doesn't mean Howe has to go though.

 

 

Edited April 15 by Ben

[samptime29]

4 hours ago, Zero said:

Poor Eddie. Let down by everyone, from the management, the coaches, the scouts, and the players 

 

This is a genuinely embarrassing post. 

[Zero]

2 hours ago, Interpolic said:

 

Would love to know where this bitterness towards one of our best ever managers comes from like, it's absolutely bizarre. 

 

He saved us from relegation, he won us the only cup in 70 years, why would I bitter for him?

 

However, you could look back the posts made these few weeks, in this thread. The PIF should be blamed for this. The scouts should be blamed for this. The lack of DOF. The players down-tooling. The coaches surrounding aren’t good enough to give Howe new idea. 
 

Those are genuine posts. So if some really believe those are the factors, isn’t Howe extremely unlucky or unfortunate to  face this unbearable task? It really sounds like this is the most terrible job in the world that our greatest manager ever doesn’t deserve this result.

 

probably the bitterness is towards you, instead of Howe. You guys trying  too fucking hard and basically blaming everything other than Howe

 

 

Edited April 15 by Zero

[NUFC91]

I still think it comes down to the last 6 games before the owners decide on what happens in the summer.

 

We haven't got a hard run it at all,, bar Arsenal we have 3 home games and should be looking at a minimum of 7 ideally 9 points from. If we pick up 10 or more points and show Improvements I think they'll be happy, on the flip if we don't pick up up many points they might have a different approach given we have only picked up 13 since January which is less than Forest and West Ham so pretty much relagation form.

 

 

 

 

 

[Mills and Boon]

31 minutes ago, Zero said:

 

He saved us from relegation, he won us the only cup in 70 years, why would I bitter for him?

 

However, you could look back the posts made these few weeks, in this thread. The PIF should be blamed for this. The scouts should be blamed for this. The lack of DOF. The players down-tooling. The coaches surrounding aren’t good enough to give Howe new idea. 
 

Those are genuine posts. So if some really believe those are the factors, isn’t Howe extremely unlucky or unfortunate to  face this unbearable task? It really sounds like this is the most terrible job in the world that our greatest manager ever doesn’t deserve this result.

 

probably the bitterness is towards you, instead of Howe. You guys trying  too fucking hard and basically blaming everything other than Howe

 

 

 

 

That's more of a reaction to the simple minded folk who blame Howe for absolutely everything that goes wrong and don't want to hear anything about other mitigating circumstances which contribute