Eddie Howe

[Colos Short and Curlies]

5 minutes ago, Abacus said:

 

Not that I disagree that at least some big team and maybe two will implode.

 

Personally, I think champions league is a bit of a high bar, which I also admittedly thought during the magic carpet ride of Howe's first full season and was then delighted and surprised like everyone when we got there.

 

Just genuinely curious as to what people expect. Target yes, and obviously I do hope we get there, but it would need a lot of things to fall our way.

 

I don't see why it's that high a bar tbh. In the last 2 non European seasons we've finished in the champions league spots.

 

We need to box clever this summer of course but no reason it shouldn't be a sensible aim.

[Wallsendmag]

6 minutes ago, andyc35i said:

That’s why I’m still annoyed with how things ended for us. If we didn’t give away the three points at Forest, we’d have gone into the last game with the possibility of finishing 7th. It was so tight even until the end despite how shite we were for much of the season. 

 

People expected a sudden uplift once we went out of Europe but facts were that we were out of sorts before any fixture build up could really have an impact as this graphic shows. We just weren't anywhere near good or consistent enough to have a real crack at qualifying for Europe.

 

 

Edited 10 hours ago by Wallsendmag

[r0cafella]

3 hours ago, Abacus said:

Where would people realistically expect to finish next season? I guess it depends on the summer and I do get that.

 

Right now, I think 6th and Europa would be a really good season and that's assuming Tonali might be away and a few relative unknowns in. Just curious what others think.

In line with our budget so 7-8. 

[TheBrownBottle]

36 minutes ago, r0cafella said:

In line with our budget so 7-8. 

Yep, around 7th is par

[r0cafella]

9 minutes ago, TheBrownBottle said:

Yep, around 7th is par

It stems from wanting to be fair and giving a proper crack at it. Eddie is on thin ice for me though, so if say a 9 point gap to Europe opens up I'd let go. however i would have moved on in the summer. 

[TheBrownBottle]

20 minutes ago, r0cafella said:

It stems from wanting to be fair and giving a proper crack at it. Eddie is on thin ice for me though, so if say a 9 point gap to Europe opens up I'd let go. however i would have moved on in the summer. 

Howe has to be given time to fix it - and i agree of course, I’d have parted ways in May, but we didn’t, so the best way forward is to draw a line and not continually re-prosecute last season. 
 

The worst case scenario is a few bad results in August and the crowd turns, the board panics and he’s out of the job early.  I don’t see who that helps.
 

He shouldn’t get a full season to be reevaluated for me - it has to be where we are around halfway.  If we’re in a bad place, giving the manager the January window might be doubling-down on a bad position.  
 

I’m happy to treat this summer as a ‘fresh start’, with neither the good nor the bad of what went before at the forefront - but that also means not getting forever to get things right.

[Abacus]

Yes, so I think those are fair expectations, alongside a bit of an evolution in playing style to hopefully get the best out of Woltemade in particular.

 

That might seem a low bar to some but I think there have been some reasonable arguments on both sides of the Howe debate. I'm on the Howe in side of things and am personally hoping for a much better league campaign alongside a decent cup run.

 

Any sort of European football the following season seems to me to be where we need to be aiming. So for now, I'll leave it, see where we end up squad wise after the summer, and look to see what's realistic then, and what might be over/underperformance. 

 

Such a relief not to be involved in the polarising twitter wars and have this place instead.