Eddie Howe

[Ilovetoon8788]

33 minutes ago, r0cafella said:

I'm not Eddie out, but how do you square that? I mean he bought these players how can they not fit his system? The compromised set up we have should avoid that. 

Look at manu with Carrick now. Same players but they look a completely different team now with new tactics. 

 

I feel Howe isn't a good manager tactically. But he certainly can develop a shit house team with players who clocks the KM and has huge stamina. That's a squad you'd get with howe. 

 

It worked for a couple of seasons, and now coupled with a poor transfer window, it's all coming off rails and Howe doesn't know how to fix it. 

 

Thats how I see it, as we are consistently just so bad in the league. 

[KaKa]

I find it terrifying he can't seem to see the issues in midfield, primarily with Tonali, and keeps wheeling him out as the sole deep midfielder.

 

It's particularly alarming because both Bruno and Miley improve things so much when they slot in there after subs have been made when Tonali goes off.

 

Just making that change and giving Tonali another run as one of the 8s would be refreshing, and at least worth a try by now?!

 

Don't understand what's going on, but just doing the same over and over is no good at all.

[Izakaya]

3 hours ago, Lotus said:

I can’t see any benefit to getting rid of EH atm.

 

He's not been given the players he needs to make his system work. 
 

And if we changed to a manager that was more tactical and coached a more penetrating type of football, I doubt we’d have the budget to buy them. 

 

Absolutely insane take. 

 

[Zero]

2 hours ago, Lotus said:

I’ve genuinely no idea how involved EH was. I think there’s lots assuming going on (and they could be right tbf).

 if you think back a couple of year to our first top 4 finish, we just outrun everyone. We didn’t outplay many teams and we still don’t. Fulham probably play better football than us but that doesn’t make them more successful. EH needs players who will consistently outrun the opposition. As long as we clock more KMs than them we do well. 
Pure shithousery and stamina monsters = a successful EH team.

We’ve moved away from that and we’re not as effective.

We also need a striker who can kind make something out of nothing. Doesn’t have to be Isak, Demba Ba would’ve loved that 22/23 team.

Wissa and Wolt don’t look like those kind of strikers, unfortunately. 

 

I do wonder whether Isak would make a difference tbh. Not saying about his injury, but I mean I don’t recall a lot of occasion in the match that makes me feel “ah if it’s Isak he could make a turn and score this” etc

 

I genuinely think both strikers are fine. It’s the whole set up that is currently causing problems

[Zero]

5 minutes ago, Izakaya said:

 

Absolutely insane take. 

 

not really. I always thought Howe doesn’t really know what he needs. If he’s in charge of the transfer instead of Ashworth in early days, I don’t think we would go for the current crops.

[Optimistic Nut]

It's all just gone a bit, "meh" at the minute. Don't think we're playing particularly badly, we just don't have that top-class spark anymore in attack. I'm happy to give him this season, very least he needs to achieve is 7th and get above the likes of Fulham and Brentford though. 

[Sibierski]

8 hours ago, Pilko said:

PSG will be rough IMO. Just got to hope we can claw something from the game. It's one where we'll defend first & counter rather than need to take the game to them and that probably suits us a bit.

 

But then he's got about the best chance in 30 years to fuck the Anfield hoodoo off. Given how crap they've been lately it'll be frustrating if we roll over for our usual simple dusting in that one.

 

City, I think it's too big a mountain to climb but we shall see. Couldn't really blame him if we lost all three tbh. 

Man City away last season, games have largely been close or it’s drifted and been like 3-0 as we chased at end. This run coming up, you do fear one (or more) isn’t far away from being proper grim. Mostly because of how unimaginative we look with the ball and confidence on a knife’s edge.

 

Can see us going 3 at the back for many of these upcoming games, which I don’t think is the right approach and will be a bit alarming.

[Whitley mag]

6 hours ago, KaKa said:

I find it terrifying he can't seem to see the issues in midfield, primarily with Tonali, and keeps wheeling him out as the sole deep midfielder.

 

It's particularly alarming because both Bruno and Miley improve things so much when they slot in there after subs have been made when Tonali goes off.

 

Just making that change and giving Tonali another run as one of the 8s would be refreshing, and at least worth a try by now?!

 

Don't understand what's going on, but just doing the same over and over is no good at all.

In the first half Villa found so many spaces between our defence and midfield, they just passed around us and it all looked very inevitable.

[Whitley mag]

7 hours ago, Lotus said:

I can’t see any benefit to getting rid of EH atm.

 

He's not been given the players he needs to make his system work. 
 

And if we changed to a manager that was more tactical and coached a more penetrating type of football, I doubt we’d have the budget to buy them. 

Poor planning and pursuing players that were never going to join us has cost the club massively.

 

However, not one player joined this summer without Howe’s approval, who do you think chose the players in the summer?

[KaKa]

I do find it laughable anyone is now trying to claim Howe hasn't been given the players he needs. That is truly incredible 

 

Howe has insisted on getting in the players he wants, from the small pool of players he has said will improve the team. Let's not rewrite history. Paul Mitchell was run out of town because of it.

 

Howe has been great and I don't think there should be any rush to make a change with him, but he has his flaws. 

 

I think next summer is going to be very telling, with the kind of business that is done. He will have now had his preferred DOF in place for a year, and so let's see how that impacts things.

 

If we're still seeing the same rigid and inflexible approach to signings then we're in big trouble.

[TheBrownBottle]

If Howe had a quarter of a billion-worth of players he didn’t want thrust on him in the summer he should have walked, in fact I’d have lost a lot of respect for him if he didn’t.  
 

it’s a ridiculous notion. 

[TheBrownBottle]

4 hours ago, Zero said:

not really. I always thought Howe doesn’t really know what he needs. If he’s in charge of the transfer instead of Ashworth in early days, I don’t think we would go for the current crops.

He was in charge of transfers in the early days.  The idea that Howe doesn’t know what he needs is bizarre. 

[Menace]

Howe has always been involved in player recruitment, this is his team. Its no surprise we have the same players linked every summer despite upper management coming and going

[Whitley mag]

The fixture list is brutal coming up and we look short of confidence and ideas, not a great situation.

 

He needs to change something as this rinse and repeat approach isn’t a great look and looks similar to his final season at Bournemouth when he looked lost.

 

I suspect now Burns fit and we’re top heavy in tough away games, he’ll revert to 5 at the back and hope Wissa can stretch the pitch, as Isak used to.

[The College Dropout]

Last summer proved we need different people leading on transfers.  
 

The transfers weren’t fit for purpose at all. 

[KingArthur]

7 hours ago, KaKa said:

I find it terrifying he can't seem to see the issues in midfield, primarily with Tonali, and keeps wheeling him out as the sole deep midfielder.

 

It's particularly alarming because both Bruno and Miley improve things so much when they slot in there after subs have been made when Tonali goes off.

 

Just making that change and giving Tonali another run as one of the 8s would be refreshing, and at least worth a try by now?!

 

Don't understand what's going on, but just doing the same over and over is no good at all.

Again, the problem wasn't the defensive midfield. You could have put prime Busquets there and it wouldn't have changed anything.

[TRon]

8 hours ago, Ilovetoon8788 said:

Look at manu with Carrick now. Same players but they look a completely different team now with new tactics. 

 

I feel Howe isn't a good manager tactically. But he certainly can develop a shit house team with players who clocks the KM and has huge stamina. That's a squad you'd get with howe. 

 

It worked for a couple of seasons, and now coupled with a poor transfer window, it's all coming off rails and Howe doesn't know how to fix it. 

 

Thats how I see it, as we are consistently just so bad in the league. 

 

 

There's been a general shift in tactics in the PL where teams are all counterpressing very effectively. They might employ a low block or a mid block, either way it disrupts our possession badly. There's a reason we look much better in the UCL but look very ordinary in the PL. 

 

We can blow teams away in Europe with our intensity, in the PL they just give us it back in spades. We don't really look much better than Fulham or Bournemouth at the moment. 

[Sima]

It's the lack of willng to change the formation during the game that is the most frustrating.  Nearly all subs are like-for-like.

Why not bring Osula on for Tonali late on?  Give Emery something to think about.

[Infinitely Content]

When I look across the often loose cannon managers across the footballing landscape, I am so grateful we have someone like Howe as ours. He's unwavering in his class, professionalism and composure in highly pressurised situations and I think he's largely unmatched in this sense. 

Whilst for the most part I really haven't enjoyed watching us this season, and found our football too often tediously boring I can see that he's trying to transition our style of play from all-action pressing to a more endurable approach, and is still searching as far as I can tell. Having little time to drill the players on the training ground is surely a big factor for such a detailed coach.

I still feel we have a team of players built on his pressing system, and wish the departure from that mentality and plan wasn't so stark. I recall even at our brilliant best it's not like we pressed relentlessly for 90 minutes, oftentimes we would blow teams away in 20-30 minute spells. I wish we could see more of that but for whatever reason it just hasn't happened and that's where my questions lie: what does a functioning Howe team look like without the relentless, high intensity approach of running opposition off the pitch and essentially applying so much pressure that they cave and want nothing to do with us?

I loved that style.

 

 

 

Edited January 26 by Infinitely Content

[Geogaddi]

3 minutes ago, TRon said:

 

 

There's been a general shift in tactics in the PL where teams are all counterpressing very effectively. They might employ a low block or a mid block, either way it disrupts our possession badly. There's a reason we look much better in the UCL but look very ordinary in the PL. 

 

We can blow teams away in Europe with our intensity, in the PL they just give us it back in spades. We don't really look much better than Fulham or Bournemouth at the moment. 

I don't believe we are any better in Europe tbh, we have beaten 3 very poor teams at home that are probably championship standard. Got schooled by Barca and couldn't cope with a 36 year old Aubameyang against Marseille. The fact Spurs are doing so well in Europe and are even worse than us in the league shows you how poor the standard is.

[TRon]

Just now, Geogaddi said:

I don't believe we are any better in Europe tbh, we have beaten 3 very poor teams at home that are probably championship standard. Got schooled by Barca and couldn't cope with a 36 year old Aubameyang against Marseille. The fact Spurs are doing so well in Europe and are even worse than us in the league shows you how poor the standard is.

 

 

That's my point really. It's easier in the UCL than in the PL, our results reflect that. Yeah just look at Spurs results for more confirmation of that. 

[joeyt]

 

Quite a few journalists now saying we need to change formation

 

 

[Gallowgate Toon]

6 minutes ago, joeyt said:

 

Quite a few journalists now saying we need to change formation

 

 

I thought the reaction to the Bournemouth experiment was a bit weird. Howe sort of downplayed it as something we wouldn't see much as he saw some good and some bad, almost as if our 4-3-3 is flawless?  I decided to torture myself and watch Hope's post-match gurning review and he agreed with Howe. 

 

Either way, our strikers are isolated just as Isak often was, but neither of them currently have his qualities to make up for it in certain moments. There are reasons that so many of our midfielders and attackers have abysmal attacking output in open play this season - it's not solely down to their quality.

[KaKa]

46 minutes ago, KingArthur said:

Again, the problem wasn't the defensive midfield. You could have put prime Busquets there and it wouldn't have changed anything.

 

That's funny because everytime Tonali gets hauled off and Bruno drops in there, there is a clear improvement. Please pay closer attention.

[Smal]

I don’t think we’re that far from things clicking. We defend very well imo, up front is our biggest issue. It took several months to coach Isak to score tap ins so I’m still hopeful we can get Wissa there.