Eddie Howe

[SUPERTOON]

1 hour ago, Robster said:

Cheers. I didn't see that article.

Was this their opinion or based on any actual fact ?
(sorry that I'm asking you to re-write their pece)

It was only a tiny snippet really, but the main feel is he came out of it more determined than ever.

[NUFC91]

One thing Eddie has to do is be ruthless this summer, pope, Murphy Willock all good servants but have to moved on. Bournemouth and Sunderland ha e proved this "you can't upset the balance of a team is nonsense".

 

[Mole]

Balance of the team is already upset anyway

[Dokko]

Someone posting stats on FB, but apparently we've put 1200 crosses in this season and it's led to 12 goals. Not sure if true, but that seems a shite return, even for us. 

 

None of our wingers can cross bar Murphy, who never times them. You're either in position or it's going to no one. 

[Minhosa]

Just now, Dokko said:

Someone posting stats on FB, but apparently we've put 1200 crosses in this season and it's led to 12 goals. Not sure if true, but that seems a shite return, even for us. 

 

None of our wingers can cross bar Murphy, who never times them. You're either in position or it's going to no one. 

In fairness, we had no bastard in the box for the first 90% of the season .

[Abacus]

2 minutes ago, Dokko said:

Someone posting stats on FB, but apparently we've put 1200 crosses in this season and it's led to 12 goals. Not sure if true, but that seems a shite return, even for us. 

 

None of our wingers can cross bar Murphy, who never times them. You're either in position or it's going to no one. 

 

Yes, this has been the problem, or also our strikers being in the wrong place when they do cross.

 

I'm certain isak and Murphy made each other look a lot better, but there hasn't really been any cohesion up top for  a while now since that partnership ended.

[Myleftboot]

This cunt resigned yet?

[Gawalls]

2 hours ago, Cronky said:

There have been a number of posts which question Eddie's ability when it comes to identifying and signing players, but his overall record is very good. Things went awry last summer, but I don't think that was his fault.

 

Eddie took over a team that was firmly in the relegation zone, without a win, and looking like they were going to go down with about 20 points. The signings that were made saved us from the drop, but they were limited in quality because we couldn't afford anything like top drawer, and many players weren't going to sign for a club is so much trouble. The exception was Bruno, but even in his case we were the only ones in for him. Arsenal were humming and hahing about a move in the summer, and that was about it. 

 

Eddie took us from that position to Champions League the next season, and our first major trophy for 70 years two years after that, along with another top five place. That was rightly hailed as a bit of a miracle of over-achievement. Yes, there were some good signings - notably Isak and Tonali - but even then we were the only ones after them at the time, and I think that both have played the best football of their careers under his management.

 

Last summer's window was a bit of a shitshow, but that was largely caused by the absence of a DOF and CEO. In order to replace Isak, we went after Cunha, Mbeuno, Ekitike, and Sesko. None of them turned us down, but we were used as a backstop in case their preferred move to a 'big six' club failed to materialise. Perhaps we were naive, but you never know until you try. We hung on to the possibility of Isak re-signing for too long, and then we had to over pay for two replacement strikers at the last minute. None of that is Eddie's fault. Our specialist recruitment service was non-existent. 

 

Woltemade and Wissa haven't worked out, at least so far. I thought they were good signings at the time, but you can never tell completely in advance.

 

It is lunacy for four seasons of excellent work in the transfer market to count for nothing because of one season of failure. We deserve to fail if we don't back Eddie at this point. As I've said, thankfully the people at the club seem to be doing that. But it can't help Eddie's morale if he hears lots of moaning from the stands. Keep the faith.

It's not helpful too keep saying Eddie's track record in signing players is great regardless of CEO and DOF yet when it goes wrong saying it doesn't effect his track record as we have no CEO and DOF. If he gets credit for one then he must get the other.

[TRC]

1 hour ago, Mole said:

Balance of the team is already upset anyway

Honestly, we can’t really make things worse at this point can we. 

[Zero]

1 hour ago, Dokko said:

Someone posting stats on FB, but apparently we've put 1200 crosses in this season and it's led to 12 goals. Not sure if true, but that seems a shite return, even for us. 

 

None of our wingers can cross bar Murphy, who never times them. You're either in position or it's going to no one. 

wait a fucking minute. 1200 crosses in 38 matches? That’s close to 30 crosses per game 

 

No fucking way. More likely we had just put in around 8-10 crosses per match

[Dokko]

18 minutes ago, Zero said:

wait a fucking minute. 1200 crosses in 38 matches? That’s close to 30 crosses per game 

 

No fucking way. More likely we had just put in around 8-10 crosses per match

 

Potentially includes all cup games.

[TRon]

1 hour ago, Minhosa said:

In fairness, we had no bastard in the box for the first 90% of the season .

 

There's probably a more complex reason for this tbf, might have something to do with our shape, tactics, possession or any number of factors. 

[AyeDubbleYoo]

2 hours ago, NUFC91 said:

One thing Eddie has to do is be ruthless this summer, pope, Murphy Willock all good servants but have to moved on. Bournemouth and Sunderland ha e proved this "you can't upset the balance of a team is nonsense".

 

TBF he signed replacements for these players already. They’ve just been poor. 

 

 

Edited May 26 by AyeDubbleYoo

[Zero]

16 minutes ago, Dokko said:

 

Potentially includes all cup games.

 It’s still a bit unbelievable to me. Make it 60 games,20 crosses per match?

 

I don’t recall we are that dominant in most games that we are able to make so many crosses

[Colos Short and Curlies]

1 minute ago, Zero said:

 It’s still a bit unbelievable to me. Make it 60 games,20 crosses per match?

 

I don’t recall we are that dominant in most games that we are able to make so many crosses

 

Maybe close if you include corners and free kicks thrown into the box?

[timeEd32]

In the PL we had 876 crosses, the most in the league. 

[Jonas]

Not even sure something as modest as this is true rather than an easy presumption by Hope but the concept that Eddie may know he stayed at Bournemouth too long should show its reasonable for people to wonder if its time here.  Not an assessment of the job he's done just a case of is it not best for the club for a tag at this point.   Yet Hope himself is dismissive of that concept I gather.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

9 minutes ago, timeEd32 said:

In the PL we had 876 crosses, the most in the league. 

 

Not even sure how productive crosses are TBH. Depends entirely on who is putting them in and who is attacking them. 

 

We do a lot of crosses because we didn't really have a way to work the ball forward except to push it out wide to Murphy. 

[duo]

3 hours ago, NUFC91 said:

One thing Eddie has to do is be ruthless this summer, pope, Murphy Willock all good servants but have to moved on. Bournemouth and Sunderland ha e proved this "you can't upset the balance of a team is nonsense".

 

Eddie ruthless  Loves his leaders and they will always make it into his team 

[Cronky]

On 25/05/2026 at 16:06, Cronky said:

 

 

I hated the final months of this season, not because of the results, but because of the reaction to those results, in the media and amongst many supporters. I'm haunted by the memory of what happened to Sir Bob. He took us from the relegation zone to 4th and 3rd place, and then when we slipped to 5th everyone seemed to be calling for his head. They got their way, but what a fantastic decision that turned out to be. 

 

 

[Cronky]

22 hours ago, Jonas said:

Not this again. Almost nobody was calling for his head. All anybody ever tends to produce to substantiate this is that the ground was half empty for a walk around (as it was in 2000/01) and it was four months after that that he was sacked. In the meantime he was retiring at the end of the following season anyway (even Sir Bobby himself accepted the time was coming to hand it over, the plan was to bring someone in to understudy him in 2003 to eventually take over), we hadn't won in 10games or something like that, were near enough bottom of the league, in obvious decline, players were downing tools and Shearer had been dropped. The fans four months earlier were a insignificant factor at best in that decision.

Find "finishing 5th" always misleading too, in itself that's fine, 6th was good under KK, but finishing outside the Champions League places as it had become was catastrophic. 

 

 

I wish that the NO threads from that era were still available. If so, you would see that the vast majority of members were calling for his sacking. I had got to the position that, although I wanted him to stay, the atmosphere had grown so toxic that his job had become impossible. He was under attack not only from the Geordie supporters, but also the Geordie media, the Geordie Chairman and his Geordie captain.

 

The issue that Freddie Shepherd completely mismanaged was Shearer's future. There was the tentative expectation that Shearer would take over from Sir Bob. As the Geordie hero, the heir apparent and the hope for the future, he was in far too powerful a position for a player. The reality was that his successor on the playing field should have been in place two seasons before his retirement, and there should have been no sense of Sir Bob keeping the managerial seat warm for him. In practice, I think Shearer was always wary of the enormous 24/7 demands and pressure of management, and was only stalling to keep his options open. The relationship between Sir Bob and his captain became very tense, and could not have been helpful for the team. 

 

Freddie was a starry-eyed fan and backed the wrong man. It became difficult to recruit a new manager because no-one who wasn't desperate would want to take a post where the previous guy had been sacked after three top-five finishes, and where it looked like they might just be keeping the seat warm for the captain. Shearer the player by that stage had become undroppable. So we ended up with Mr Desperate - something like our 5th choice in the shape of Souness. 

 

At the time, I was disgusted at the foolishness that had operated at all levels of the club. I sent Sir Bob a letter of support and received a letter in reply. I hoped never to see something like that again, and as I've said, the thought that it might happen to Eddie - the best manager we've ever had in my 60+ years of being a supporter - just fills me with dread.

[DC Magpie]

After letting the disappointment of Sunday's shitshow percolate for a day, I am still Eddie Out. And here's why:

 

1) Injuries played a part this season to be sure, especially with Bruno, but if your only answer is "hey, let's play the 6'7" guy there", then your roster is ill constructed or (my hunch) you are so blindly wedded to your 4-3-3 that you can't adjust your scheme to the players you have available. Even after all the excuses were gone ("we have too many games, no time on the practice pitch, etc, etc, etc"), he came out with the same shit that hadn't been working all year. He didn't adjust until the last few games, and we saw one flash of brilliance v WHam and then reverted to crap against Fulham (where his team selection was once again maddening), which raises my second concern with Eddie:

 

2) The lack of effort against Fulham reinforces for me that Eddie has very much lost the team. Bruno literally laid down and quit. There comes a point when even a great coach's message gets stale if the message and tactics never change even after those tactics stop working. And once you've lost confidence, you can't get it back. He had a chance to implement a change after the international break, but didn't until the very end. Which leads to my next concern: 

 

3) I'd argue nobody who fancies themselves a technically gifted player wants to play exclusively in a 4-3-3 high press. The 4-3-3 has its place, but I'm not confident Eddie has it in him to truly embrace the change in approach we need to attract those players, who will look elsewhere if they have options. It would be malpractice for an agent to turn a gifted player into a track athlete running around in circles like Usain Bolt. In my view, this is why we whiffed on our top six striker targets last summer, many of whom chose to be backups elsewhere. This leads to my doomsday scenario:

 

4) If we allow Eddie to have a voice in constructing the roster this summer and he is then out by Christmas, we are rightly, completely and truly fucked. Better to move on now and let a new manager construct a strategy around the key players we have (assuming they all aren't already on the phone with their agents to get them the hell out of here), and to add / subtract from the roster in furtherance of that strategy. Erect a statue for Eddie next to Shearer's if you like, but if we aspire to be consistently more than we are today, we cannot be afraid to change.

 

Fin.

[Jonas]

2 hours ago, Cronky said:

 

I wish that the NO threads from that era were still available. If so, you would see that the vast majority of members were calling for his sacking. I had got to the position that, although I wanted him to stay, the atmosphere had grown so toxic that his job had become impossible. He was under attack not only from the Geordie supporters, but also the Geordie media, the Geordie Chairman and his Geordie captain.

 

The issue that Freddie Shepherd completely mismanaged was Shearer's future. There was the tentative expectation that Shearer would take over from Sir Bob. As the Geordie hero, the heir apparent and the hope for the future, he was in far too powerful a position for a player. The reality was that his successor on the playing field should have been in place two seasons before his retirement, and there should have been no sense of Sir Bob keeping the managerial seat warm for him. In practice, I think Shearer was always wary of the enormous 24/7 demands and pressure of management, and was only stalling to keep his options open. The relationship between Sir Bob and his captain became very tense, and could not have been helpful for the team. 

 

Freddie was a starry-eyed fan and backed the wrong man. It became difficult to recruit a new manager because no-one who wasn't desperate would want to take a post where the previous guy had been sacked after three top-five finishes, and where it looked like they might just be keeping the seat warm for the captain. Shearer the player by that stage had become undroppable. So we ended up with Mr Desperate - something like our 5th choice in the shape of Souness. 

 

At the time, I was disgusted at the foolishness that had operated at all levels of the club. I sent Sir Bob a letter of support and received a letter in reply. I hoped never to see something like that again, and as I've said, the thought that it might happen to Eddie - the best manager we've ever had in my 60+ years of being a supporter - just fills me with dread.

Wasn't on internet forums then but can imagine. Even so internet chatter circa 2004 meant far less than now and had to have had far less, if any, baring on that decision than even some boos at the end of a few poor games did. 

However reluctantly even Sir Bobby was in agreement that 04/05 was his final year here and the understudy plan was around as early as 2003 when we were flying for non-performance related reasons. Sir Bobby staying wasn't an option even before the decline it would have meant renewing a contract (starting the temp feel over as it couldn't have been for long) for an elderly coach. The change was being made regardless 9month later. All it boiled down to was wait until May 2005, make the change in the summer of 2004 or make the change during 04/05 when options are limited.

 

 

[The Prophet]

I dont disagree with all of this, but a few bits...

 

2 hours ago, DC Magpie said:

After letting the disappointment of Sunday's shitshow percolate for a day, I am still Eddie Out. And here's why:

 

1) Injuries played a part this season to be sure, especially with Bruno, but if your only answer is "hey, let's play the 6'7" guy there", then your roster is ill constructed or (my hunch) you are so blindly wedded to your 4-3-3 that you can't adjust your scheme to the players you have available. Even after all the excuses were gone ("we have too many games, no time on the practice pitch, etc, etc, etc"), he came out with the same shit that hadn't been working all year. He didn't adjust until the last few games, and we saw one flash of brilliance v WHam and then reverted to crap against Fulham (where his team selection was once again maddening), which raises my second concern with Eddie:

 

I agree Howe can be both stubborn and reactive, but I don't think he's wed to one particular system. This sesson for example, we're more often than not 4-5-0 off the ball and 3-2-5 off it. My critique would be once it has become evident a plan isn't working, he often won't change this until it's too late. Woltamade in midfield is an example of this.

 

2 hours ago, DC Magpie said:

2) The lack of effort against Fulham reinforces for me that Eddie has very much lost the team. Bruno literally laid down and quit. There comes a point when even a great coach's message gets stale if the message and tactics never change even after those tactics stop working. And once you've lost confidence, you can't get it back. He had a chance to implement a change after the international break, but didn't until the very end. Which leads to my next concern: 

 

I think a few players did down tools on Sunday, but Bruno wasn't one of those. He's said himself, he was ill last week and cramping up as a result.

 

It was fairly evident a few had eyes on the world cup or were preparing for the exit door.  I'm not sure it necessarily follows he's lost the dressing room though.

 

2 hours ago, DC Magpie said:

3) I'd argue nobody who fancies themselves a technically gifted player wants to play exclusively in a 4-3-3 high press. The 4-3-3 has its place, but I'm not confident Eddie has it in him to truly embrace the change in approach we need to attract those players, who will look elsewhere if they have options. It would be malpractice for an agent to turn a gifted player into a track athlete running around in circles like Usain Bolt. In my view, this is why we whiffed on our top six striker targets last summer, many of whom chose to be backups elsewhere. This leads to my doomsday scenario:

 

We haven't consistently played a high press for two sessons now. Most sides will press to a degree and I wouldn't say it makes them less attractive. PSG for example are arguably the most formidable teams in Europe right now and they have a very aggressive press.

 

Most targets moved elsewhere last summer as we were competing with clubs with more clout and deeper pockets.

 

2 hours ago, DC Magpie said:

 

4) If we allow Eddie to have a voice in constructing the roster this summer and he is then out by Christmas, we are rightly, completely and truly fucked. Better to move on now and let a new manager construct a strategy around the key players we have (assuming they all aren't already on the phone with their agents to get them the hell out of here), and to add / subtract from the roster in furtherance of that strategy. Erect a statue for Eddie next to Shearer's if you like, but if we aspire to be consistently more than we are today, we cannot be afraid to change.

 

Fin.

 

The football strategy of most clubs will be determined by the Sporting Director. The recruitment of both coaches and players will then fall in line.

 

If for example, you wanted to be an aggressive pressing team, you'd hire a coach who plays that kind of football and recruit players who will buy into it. That way if the manager is binned, you don't need to rip up the blue print and start from scratch.

 

I'm all for Howe having a voice in recruitment, as long as he isn't responsible for the overall strategy.

 

 

Edited May 26 by The Prophet

[KaKa]

On 25/05/2026 at 08:47, Nucasol said:

Reading The Athletic write up and this stuck out:

 

In January, Howe had pushed to sign Rayan, the young Brazilian forward, but the club demurred and instead the player left Vasco da Gama for Bournemouth. It meant another window closed with Newcastle failing to upgrade their team.

 

Surely there was a way we could have offloaded a fringe player like Willock to

make this work?

 

We were told openly that there was money to spend in January and scope to move summer signings forward if the right player was available.

 

This quote regarding Rayan seems like some made up revisionist bull crap and it's really annoying.