Eddie Howe

[Fak]

Just now, Vinny Green Balls said:

and for Villa away

 

That doesn't count

[The Prophet]

The away form is shite and we're not playing well, but I still back him to turn it round, he's earned it and then some.

 

 

Edited November 9, 2025 by The Prophet

[TRon]

4 minutes ago, Vinny Green Balls said:

was it? We slaughtered a few teams, including Man United and Palace after the cup final.

 

 

That's why I said most of the year. We've had some sporadic good wins, but it's been more bad performances than good. 

[Coffee_Johnny]

23 hours ago, Solitude20 said:

What’s really done us in this season is losing both of our first-choice fullbacks at the same time and having our wingers massively underperform. That combination would unsettle any side in world football. 

Word. Plus not really having a forward who is well, very forward. Form will pick up and we’ll find a way to play. 

[andycap]

No striker on the bench doesn't help us neither, woltemade was ineffective and we needed a finisher on the pitch to then take Barnes off was crazy thinking. 

[Vinny Green Balls]

2 minutes ago, TRon said:

 

 

That's why I said most of the year. We've had some sporadic good wins, but it's been more bad performances than good. 

I think it was just February and May where we looked poor last season. It wasn't sporadic. We went on another good unbeaten streak after the cup final. Our league record was 6-1-1 until the last two games, and of course we lost to Arsenal on the last away game.

 

 

Edited November 9, 2025 by Vinny Green Balls

[NE27]

He has a lot of credit in the bank does Eddie, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't slightly worried with the performances of late.

 

And that's not something I thought I'd ever level at a Howe side, he usually always has us set up to be competitive. 

 

We look a total disorganised mess atm and even worse, complete pussies in 50/50's Etc which is mad considering intensity was basically the DNA of our side.

 

The whole league appear to have went quite robust this season and what made our side different is now a moot point, we are being played at our own game and we don't have any plan B.

 

Eddie still has my backing for whatever it's worth, and pray he can pull us out of this lull.

[Vinny Green Balls]

I think the final game of last season is distorting some views on here.

[NWMag]

I have faith he can turn it around, but I definitely think our 433 has run its course. Once Wissa is back I’d be going with a 4231, Bruno and Tonali as a 2, Wolt as the 10, Wissa up top. Then either 2 wingers, or a narrow 3 with Ramsey +1 either side of Wolt, and Hall/Tino giving width.

 

[HaydnNUFC]

5 minutes ago, Vinny Green Balls said:

I think the final game of last season is distorting some views on here.

Unsure, like. Since the Palace 5-0, we were awful and punished for it at Villa.

Fairly poor against Ipswich, who had 10 men for 60 minutes and we still couldn’t score from open play against them. Thankfully it didn’t matter.

 

Thought we were all bluster at Brighton when we had top 5 to play for and they had nothing. And it took a 89th minute penalty for us to score.

 

Don’t capitalise on an early goal against Chelsea and them getting an early red in the way we hoped. A late deflected shot wrapped it up but thought we were really poor in that game.

 

Barely remember an attack worthy of the name at Arsenal who’s season fizzled out and then some.

 

Atrocious showing against Everton which could’ve cost us top 5.

 

 

Edited November 9, 2025 by HaydnNUFC

[Sibierski]

How many managers reinvent themselves when in a slump? 
 

Can’t after this break, roll out the same midfield, Wolte up top on his own and expect different results. Even if it’s the wingers sitting narrow so they’re closer to Wolte, or a 4-4-1-1, or a 3-2-4-1 shape in build up (so Thaiw starting RB with Schar CB and Hall coming inside to build attacks / help possession), it just had to be different.

[Vinny Green Balls]

1 minute ago, HaydnNUFC said:

Unsure, like. Since the Palace 5-0, we were awful and punished for it at Villa.

Fairly poor against Ipswich, who had 10 men for 60 minutes and we still couldn’t score from open play against them. Thankfully it didn’t matter.

 

Thought we were all bluster at Brighton when we had top 5 to play for and they had nothing. And it took a 89th minute penalty for us to score.

 

Don’t capitalise on an early goal against Chelsea and them getting an early red in the way we hoped. A late deflected shot wrapped it up but thought we were really poor in that game.

 

Barely remember an attack worthy of the name at Arsenal who’s season fizzled out and then some.

 

Atrocious showing against Everton.

 

 

 

We were never in doubt with Ipswich. It was a straightforward win, and we could canter to it. We never win at Brighton and draws have been on the cards for most seasons. A draw was still a decent result.  
 

Didn’t think we were awful against Chelsea. Another when I never doubted the result. Arsenal away was about as predictable as a sunrise.

 

Everton was fucking awful.

 

but even if you take that into consideration, we were awful starting late April. Not all calendar year.

[Displayname]

9 minutes ago, Vinny Green Balls said:

I think it was just February and May where we looked poor last season. It wasn't sporadic. We went on another good unbeaten streak after the cup final. Our league record was 6-1-1 until the last two games, and of course we lost to Arsenal on the last away game.

 

 

 

We looked poor most of the last season expect between mid-December to mid-January and mid-March to mid-April imo. (In the Premier League).

 

Maybe not poor all the time, but uinspiring atleast.

[The Prophet]

I do fear he'll be a victim of his own success. If we don't finish in a European spot the fans will smell blood. 

[huss9]

53 minutes ago, Ronaldo said:

Bit of a red flag that he left Burn on for set piece threat. I get that’s there’s been a shift towards pragmatism throughout the league this season but fucking hell. We’ve spent far, far too much money for us to be banking on Dan Burn from set pieces at the expense of a balanced side able to progress the ball on the left and not be totally exposed as we were. It screams out of ideas.

 

 

 

agree.

its all sounds very Brewcy doesnt it.

[TRon]

14 minutes ago, Vinny Green Balls said:

I think it was just February and May where we looked poor last season. It wasn't sporadic. We went on another good unbeaten streak after the cup final. Our league record was 6-1-1 until the last two games, and of course we lost to Arsenal on the last away game.

 

 

 

 

 

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. 

[SAK]

We’ve churned out results in Howes time without playing brilliant football most of the time except for few occasions e.g PSG at home, Cup final win.

 

Now he can’t get his team to get results it shows up the team deficiencies a lot, poor passing and ball retention especially under pressure. What’s surprising is that we’re soft in the tackles, pressurising teams and winning 50/50 duels something we were good at a couple of season back.

 

Something that I notice is when the ball is being ping ponged about in the air other teams can get it under control as it drops and pass to a team mate which our lot can’t seem to.

[JoeyBartoon]

5 minutes ago, HaydnNUFC said:

Unsure, like. Since the Palace 5-0, we were awful and punished for it at Villa.

Fairly poor against Ipswich, who had 10 men for 60 minutes and we still couldn’t score from open play against them. Thankfully it didn’t matter.

 

Thought we were all bluster at Brighton when we had top 5 to play for and they had nothing. And it took a 89th minute penalty for us to score.

 

Don’t capitalise on an early goal against Chelsea and them getting an early red in the way we hoped. A late deflected shot wrapped it up but thought we were really poor in that game.

 

Barely remember an attack worthy of the name at Arsenal who’s season fizzled out and then some.

 

Atrocious showing against Everton which could’ve cost us top 5.

 

 

 

Since the 4–1 defeat to Villa last season, the team has managed 5 wins in 17 Premier League games — although that poor run followed an impressive stretch of 5 consecutive league victories.

 

He’s clearly capable of turning it around, but I think he needs to try something different from the 4-3-3. 

[huss9]

1 minute ago, The Prophet said:

I do fear he'll be a victim of his own success. If we don't finish in a European spot the fans will smell blood. 

rightly so.

we need to qualify for europe.

[JT24]

2 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

I do fear he'll be a victim of his own success. If we don't finish in a European spot the fans will smell blood. 

Really? European football should be a minimum with how much we’ve spent. 

[HaydnNUFC]

10 minutes ago, Vinny Green Balls said:

We were never in doubt with Ipswich. It was a straightforward win, and we could canter to it. We never win at Brighton and draws have been on the cards for most seasons. A draw was still a decent result.  
 

Didn’t think we were awful against Chelsea. Another when I never doubted the result. Arsenal away was about as predictable as a sunrise.

 

Everton was fucking awful.

 

but even if you take that into consideration, we were awful starting late April. Not all calendar year.

Agree that it’s mid April onwards rather than the year but those games;

 

If you can find them and bare to watch them, watch first half against Ipswich again and the second half against Chelsea. They were excruciating and lacked any form of creativity and didn’t scream ‘never in doubt’ to me like. Similar to what we’re watching now. The latter was against 10 men and both were with Isak up front.

 

I don’t find ‘we’ve been terrible at venue x in the past so it’s fine and acceptable if we are once again’ a reasonable way of thinking, like. Regarding the Arsenal and Brighton results that is. If we won at Arsenal who had only beaten Ipswich in their 6 games prior we’d have had top 5 wrapped up with a game to spare. Yet we barely threatened again, as imo we have as a club a mentality issue when going away to top sides in the league. I thought Howe had cracked it with the wins at Man Utd, Spurs and the first leg at Arsenal but yet we served up what we did at Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea.

 

That’s a different discussion though.

 

 

Edited November 9, 2025 by HaydnNUFC

[Danh1]

5 minutes ago, JoeyBartoon said:

Since the 4–1 defeat to Villa last season, the team has managed 5 wins in 17 Premier League games — although that poor run followed an impressive stretch of 5 consecutive league victories.

 

He’s clearly capable of turning it around, but I think he needs to try something different from the 4-3-3. 

He will. He’ll go 3 at the back to accommodate Burn when everyone’s fit. That worked well for us previously….

 

 

[Andy]

6 minutes ago, The Prophet said:

I do fear he'll be a victim of his own success. If we don't finish in a European spot the fans will smell blood. 

 

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. 

[SAK]

4 minutes ago, JT24 said:

Really? European football should be a minimum with how much we’ve spent. 

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.

[The Prophet]

1 minute ago, huss9 said:

rightly so.

we need to qualify for europe.

 

1 minute ago, JT24 said:

Really? European football should be a minimum with how much we’ve spent. 

 

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.