Eddie Howe

Background and History

Born in 1977 in Amersham, Eddie Howe (EH) spent his playing career almost exclusively with Bournemouth, having come up through their youth system. A defender by trade, he debuted for Bournemouth in 1994, playing in 200 games until 2002, when he moved to Portsmouth. In two years with Pompey he played only 2 games, due to what was to become a career-ending knee injury. In 2004 he was loaned out to Swindon Town, but did not make any appearances. Recalled by Portsmouth and immediately sent back on loan to Bournemouth, EH made 17 appearances, scoring 1 goal.¹

Quite incredibly, the supporters created “Eddieshare”, a fund that would raise the money to secure his permanent transfer from Portsmouth. Within days, the supporters raised the 21,000 pounds necessary to bring EH back home for good. From 2004-2007, EH made 53 appearances (1 goal); in 2007, he retired from football at the age of 29 due to his numerous injuries. EH cites his inability to “make it as a player” as his primary fuel for his obsession with coaching.²

In December 2006, the manager of Bournemouth, Kevin Bond, appointed Howe as player-coach and put him in charge of the reserve team. In September 2008, Howe was sacked alongside the entire coaching staff. However, he quickly returned as a youth coach. EH cites this moment as being “key in his development as a manager”, because he had to teach kids the fundamentals of football. In December 2008, he was offered the position of caretaker manager of the first team.¹

Although his first two games in charge were defeats, he was offered the permanent manager position in January 2009, with the impossible task of bringing Bournemouth out of the relegation zone (Bournemouth had started the season with a -17 point deficit). He did however achieve the impossible and kept Bournemouth up in the Football League. Next season (2009-2010), he started with 8 wins out of 9 games, a club record. At the end of the 2009-2010 season, he got Bournemouth promoted to League One, after 2 years in the fourth tier.¹

After rejecting multiple offers for managing other teams, EH signed with Burnley in January 2011. At the end of the 2010-2011 season, Burnley finished 8th in the Championship. Next year, Burnley finished 13th. In October 2012, EH left Burnley citing “personal reasons” (the death of his mother)³ and returned to Bournemouth as manager.

At the end of the 2012-2013 season, EH and Bournemouth secured promotion to the Championship, finishing 1 point behind Doncaster Rovers. In Bournemouth’s maiden season in the Championship they finished 13th, 6 points outside the playoff spots. In one of the interviews referenced below, EH discusses finishing outside the playoff spots and how it was a blessing because the club were not ready to make the step up to the PL. On April 15, 2015, EH was named “Manager of the Decade” at the Football League awards. Two weeks later, Bournemouth would secure promotion to the Premier League for their first time in their history.

In their first PL season (2015-2016), Bournemouth finished 16th, 5 points clear of relegation. In 2016-2017, Bournemouth finished 9th, while in 2017-2018 they finished 12th, to secure a fourth consecutive year in the PL. In 2018-2019 they finished 14th, while in 2018-2019 they finished 18th, to end their five year run in the PL. EH left Bournemouth shortly after and after a 15-month hiatus he is now in charge of Newcastle United. For his managerial record, see Table 1.³

Club	Appointed	Until	Record (P: W-D-L)	Win%	PPM	GF:GA
AFC Bournemouth	2008-12-31	2011-01-16	102: 51-17-34	50.0	1.43	1.50:1.07
Burnley	2011-01-16	2012-10-12	86: 35-17-34	39.1	1.42	1.52:1.52
AFC Bournemouth	2012-10-12	2020-08-01	355: 144-75-136	40.2	1.69	1.52:1.48
Newcastle	2021-11-08	Present	6: 1-2-3	16.6	0.80	1.00:2.16
Total	–	–	551: 229-116-206	37.3	1.34	1.39:1.56

He has managed a significant number of games (551), considering his age (44). His experience as youth coach and manager starting from the bottom up is certainly a plus. His win % is decent (~37%), and he gets quite a lot of points per match (PPM). His teams however concede over 1.5 goals/game, which should ring alarm bells for any Newcastle fans. One might argue that part of his success comes from having known Bournemouth inside out; his record outside Bournemouth is not stellar (in fact, at Burnley he has the lowest win % out of all his managerial employments and the lowest PPM). So, I believe there is a shadow of doubt over his ability to successfully coach a club outside Bournemouth.

Formations, Tactics, Style of Play

According to Transfermarkt, EH’s favourite formation is 4-4-2 double 6 (Figure 1). The double six is also known as double pivot, or two holding midfielders in front of the defence. EH has his own little spin on the formation (Figure 2).

Overall

In EH’s vision, one of the two holding midfielders becomes a box-to-box midfielder, while the other holding midfielder pendulates from left to right to sweep up loose balls and cover the defense. EH makes great use of his fullbacks and wingers – he really likes his wide players. The fullbacks usually look for the overlapping winger, or try to cut inside and look for the pass. There is a lot of motion in the attacking part of EH’s sides, with players that are required to cover a lot of ground. EH also likes to play with a roaming striker, that drops into pockets of space in front of the opposition box.

In his Bournemouth side, Harry Arter was the main box-to-box midfielder, while Andrew Surman was the main holding midfielder. In fact, this partnership was heavily used during Howe’s tenure (Surman made 198 appearances over 7 seasons – 6th most out of all players ever used by Howe, while Arter made 188 appearances over 6 seasons – 8th most out of all players ever used by Howe). The main striker was Callum Wilson – 187 appearances over 6 seasons – 9th in total number of appearances. EH also likes to build partnerships between his wide players (i.e., left back – left winger, right back – right winger), and will very often use the same pairings for long periods of time.

Attacking

When it comes to attacking play style, EH’s teams like to build up possession from the back, and to search for the right opportunity to strike. Very important in the EH setup are wingers, who are expected to be explosive, pacey, and able to take defenders in one-on-one situations. Helping the wingers are the fullbacks, who are expected to overlap or cut inside to provide passing options.

Another important part of the EH attacking setup is the roaming striker. He is expected to drop deeper to take the ball, provide passing or shooting options, and be capable of taking defenders one-on-one (kinda like Harry Kane). Overall, attacking players are expected to have a good work ethic, stamina, agility, and quick decision making.

Defending

EH’s defending starts straight from the front with very high pressing. Again, his players must be very fit to be able to continuously press during the game. His philosophy is based on not allowing the opponent even the slightest chance to create opportunities. You can see in the interview he gives after beating Chelsea 3-0 away⁵ how he instructed his players to continuously press the Chelsea defenders and try to win the ball. He uses pressing triggers (like a bad pass by a defender) to have his players swarm in on the receiver of the pass and try to recover the ball. This tactic, however, is risky and has to be tailored to the opponent, due to the possibility of the opposition clearing the ball through long balls or pin-point passes, which in turn leaves EH’s team exposed in defence.

Newcastle Era

While he has only been in charge for 6 games at Newcastle, EH has already started imprinting his style on the squad. Whereas against Brentford (his first game in charge, which he had to watch from his hotel room due to testing positive for COVID) he arranged the team in a 3-5-2 shape (a remnant from the Bruce era), in 4/5 games since then he has opted for his tried and true 4-4-2 shape (all images from whoscored.com).

The first major change EH made was to bring Jonjo Shelvey back into the team. Next, he experimented with fullbacks until he settled on the Lewis/Manquillo pair. As described above, fullbacks are essential in the style of play used by EH, same as wingers. For the latter position EH seems to be still experimenting, with a variety of players having been used across the 6 games: Saint-Maximin, Fraser, Murphy, Almiron, and Ritchie. It will be interesting to see what players he looks to bring in during the January transfer window, and if he will try to replace the existing wingers/fullbacks.

In terms of performance, in only two out of six games (v. Brentford and v. Leicester) have Newcastle had more possession than their opponent; they have even conceded possession at home v. Norwich and v. Burnley. Their passing accuracy is also suffering, with recorded numbers of 60 (v. Liverpool), 66 (v. Burnley), and 69 (v. Norwich), 72 (v. Brentford), 80 (v. Leicester), 80 (v. Arsenal)%. Newcastle have so far scored 6 goals and conceded 13 in the 6 games EH has been in charge; the > 2 goals/game conceded so far should ring alarm bells for Newcastle fans. A leaky defense at this stage of the season, coupled with one of the worst starts in the history of the Premier League after 13 games (see below) and an incredibly tough schedule ahead will no doubt make even the most optimistic fans worry about Newcastle’s Premier League status.

Transfers

In Tables 2 and 3 you can find the most expensive transfers Bournemouth has ever made.

Entry	Position	Player	Originating Club	Fee (mil. £)	Signing Date
1	CM	Jefferson Lerma	Levante	25.0	2018-08
2	CB	Nathan Ake	Chelsea	20.0	2017-06
3	ST	Dominic Solanke	Liverpool	19.0	2019-01
4	CM	Philip Billing	Huddersfield	15.0	2019-07
5	LW	Jordon Ibe	Liverpool	15.0	2016-07
6	LW	Arnaut Danjuma	Club Brugge	13.7	2019-08
7	LB	Lloyd Kelly	Briston City	13.0	2019-05

Entry	Position	Player	Receiving Club	Fee (mil. £)	Signing Date
1	CB	Nathan Ake	Man City	41.0	2020-08
2	CB	Tyrone Mings	Aston Villa	20.0	2019-07
3	ST	Callum Wilson	Newcastle Utd	20.0	2020-09
4	GK	Aaron Ramsdale	Sheffield United	18.5	2020-08
5	RM	Matt Ritchie	Newcastle Utd	12.0	2016-07
6	ST	Lys Mousset	Sheffield United	10.0	2019-07
7	ST	Benik Afobe	Wolves	10.0	2018-06

EH has often been criticised for his transfer policy. He has very often stated that he likes to “buy British”⁶ which we all know comes with its own disadvantages and higher price tags (the rule in England is for at least 8 homegrown players in a 25-man squad). An interesting article by Alex Deutsch discusses the Bournemouth transfer policy.⁷ He claims that Bournemouth’s transfer policy is due to several factors:

1. Owner buying power – at the time of writing the article (June 2020), the Bournemouth owner was worth 110 million pounds, which ranked him 17th in the PL.
2. Low funds available for purchasing players makes it necessary to adopt a “diamond in the rough” type approach – buy potential stars and have them molded by EH.
3. The wage bill of the club is very small – they could not afford to pay players ridiculous wages. For example, Callum Wilson was the main earner of the team, with 60k pounds / week.
4. Bournemouth’s transfer policy sees high initial transfer fees associated with low wage bills. The high initial transfer fees are related to the reluctance of bigger clubs to sell young, promising players.

Within his Bournemouth tenure from 2012-2020, EH recruited 181 players, out of which 34 came for a fee. In total, he spent 242,750,000 £, for an average of 7,139,705 £ / player with fee. Below, find the amounts obtained from players sold and those invested in transfers starting with the 2012-2013 season (Table 4).

Season	Amount Players Sold (mil. £)	Amount Players Bought (mil. £)
2012-2013	0.80	1.33
2013-2014	0.00	3.45
2014-2015	3.14	4.09
2015-2016	0.55	46.75
2016-2017	20.10	34.53
2017-2018	0.00	29.10
2018-2019	17.14	75.60
2019-2020	29.27	47.90
Total	71.00	242.75

It is clear from Table 4 that Bournemouth has spent a lot of money on transfers, especially starting in the 2015-2016 season when they got promoted to the PL. Amongst these transfers were some good pieces of business (Tyrone Mings – bought for 10 mil. £, sold for 20 to A. Villa, Matt Ritchie – bought for 0.5 mil. £, sold for 12 to Newcastle), and some very poor ones (Max Gradel – bought for 9 mil. £, sold for 3 mil. £, to Toulouse, Jordon Ibe – bought for 16 mil. £, left on a free). I have not added to the list the players they sold in the summer of 2020 when they got relegated, but most of them were really good pieces of business (Nathan Ake – bought for 20 mil. £, sold for 41 to Man City, Callum Wilson – bought for 3.3 mil. £, sold for 20 mil. to Newcastle, Aaron Ramsdale – bought for 0.8 mil. £ , sold back to Sheffield United for 18 mil. £).

Relationship with Media

EH is very open with the media. In an interview given to fourfourtwo.com,⁸ he mentions that his initial dealings with the media in League Two were one-on-one chats with the local reporter, while press conferences in the Premier League are much different than in any other league. He also mentioned that he does not like discussing tactics with the media, so as to not give his opponents any advantage. He also aims to be as honest as possible with the media and refrains from playing mind games with the reporters or opposition.

My Thoughts

What I see in terms of advantages are his age, ability to coach players, his fluid attacking-minded playstyle, and his dedication to the job. He has extensive experience managing and has reputable experience in the PL. The Bournemouth transfer policy of buying diamonds in the rough and refining them is something that he will likely not experience at Newcastle, as the new owners will likely “splash the cash” in the coming transfer windows. However, even a complete overhaul might not be enough to save Newcastle from relegation, and EH might have to use his talents to get Newcastle promoted from the Championship in the following season.

When it comes to young players, at Bournemouth he did not really have the chance to work with decent young players coming through their youth system, seeing as they had a Cat 3 academy. He did however help develop Harry Arter, Charlie Austin, Tyrone Mings, Nathan Ake, etc. At Newcastle he will have found without a doubt a better academy, however the facilities around the club need updating and upgrading. Since EH likes to be involved in all aspects of the club, this could be an opportunity to use his experience and participate in the building of excellent training and recovery facilities at Newcastle, while simultaneously working with exciting new players.

Now for his disadvantages. I believe him being a “one club man” is going to be detrimental to his Newcastle stint. To explain, he did an incredible job at Bournemouth where he knew the club inside out. Coming to a new club where he does not really know the inner-workings might have an impact on him, seeing as he would need to form new relationships with pretty much everyone at the club. This is however helped by new ownership with unlimited funds, so the transition should be smoother. With his dedication to the job, this might be an easy obstacle to deal with, but also it might not. Only time will tell.

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Howe
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_5B8SnKz_k – Eddie Howe EXTENDED INTERVIEW | The Premier League Show
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFM0lpbAT-M – Eddie Howe | A Premier League quest: 20 years as player and manager at AFC Bournemouth | CV Stories
4. https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/eddie-howe/stationen/trainer/10976/plus/1
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M-W8sy09Qw – Eddie Howe: Tactics, Chelsea 0 Bournemouth 3 – Masterclass
6. https://tbrfootball.com/why-eddie-howes-transfer-policy-at-bournemouth-is-bucking-the-trend/
7. https://medium.com/@alexdeutsch_11292/afc-bournemouth-transfer-policy-does-it-work-4c83c4bb4cd4
8. https://www.fourfourtwo.com/performance/training/eddie-howe-how-i-handle-media

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