Eddie Howe's first Premier League season has been impressive, but he must pick next job carefullyThe last England Under-20s side to play at the 1998 Toulon tournament featured Frank Lampard, Jamie Carragher, Emile Heskey and Kieron Dyer, who went on to win 239 senior caps between them and, with the exception of Dyer, plenty more trophies at club level. Naturally, England lost to Argentina that day, just as, later that World Cup summer, Glenn Hoddle’s senior team would lose to the same nation on penalties 160 miles north in St Etienne.
Making his first, and last, start that day for an England team at any level, with a No 12 on his back, was Edward John Frank Howe, the only man in the squad from a third-tier club, drafted in at the very last minute.
Injury ended Eddie Howe's playing career at an early age
Five years later, he was contemplating a drastic career-rethink, after his young promise disappeared with the click of a dislocated knee-cap playing for Portsmouth at the City Ground in 2002 . For Howe’s more celebrated peers in that England Under-20s team, successful careers have segued into comfortable lives in their mid-thirties: punditry, Major League Soccer, a swansong in the Championship, reality TV. In the meantime, Howe has been consolidating his position as the brightest young English coach in the Premier League in a bleak season for the English manager.
Victory for Bournemouth over Newcastle on Saturday put them 11 points clear of the relegation zone and, in a season when 38 points might just be enough to survive, they will reach that total if they win at home to Swansea this weekend. A Sky Sports survey of the value of the Premier League XIs that started week 26, the weekend of Feb 13-14, found that, at £11.3 million, Bournemouth’s was the lowest cost of all.
Bournemouth have had a remarkable season
Leicester (first XI cost that weekend £22.7 million, placed 18th by budget) and Watford (£15.6 million, 19th by budget) have outperformed Bournemouth in terms of value relative to league position but then Howe’s club are the only one from that group never to have played before in the top-flight.
A season of survival in the Premier League will cap a remarkable seven years for Howe in which he has taken his club from League Two and a 17-point Football League deduction, through three promotions, in two spells in charge. The perception in some quarters has been that the investment in January in Benik Afobe and Lewis Grabban, chiefly by Max Demin, the club’s Russian owner, has been the key factor.
Benik Afobe has been an astute signing so far
Yet when you consider that Newcastle’s four January signings, costing around £30 million plus one loanee, Seydou Doumbia from Roma, have yielded one goal between them in the same period in which Afobe has scored four, you can see what a value signing the striker has been. Afobe and Grabban cost around £16 million combined, consolidating Howe’s solid reputation for good recruitment.
The question now is, what next for English football’s breakthrough coach of the last five years? The three points at the weekend after all, took Bournemouth above Alan Pardew’s Crystal Palace, which means that Howe is currently the highest-placed English manager in the game. On past experience, the tendency to accelerate the development of promising young English coaches has not always benefited them.
McClaren and Pardew have, at times, both moved on too quickly and fallen precipitously. Aidy Boothroyd and Paul Jewell achieved miracle promotions and then fell away. This time last year it was Garry Monk who was being asked whether he might covet the England manager’s job one day. Howe’s career development suggests he will take his time.
Steve McClaren perhaps took the England job too soon
The three anterior cruciate ligament injuries to Max Gradel, Tyrone Mings and Callum Wilson threatened to rip the heart out of Bournemouth’s season before it began, but it has been a feature of Howe’s rise that his sides have adapted gradually to new divisions. They suffered some heavy defeats early in their first Championship season before acclimatising and then, as now, the players and their manager rose to the challenge.
The side who beat Newcastle comprised six free signings, including the goalkeeper Artur Boruc and the entire back four. The left-back Charlie Daniels has been one of the league’s best in that position, aged 29. Matt Ritchie cost £400,000 from Swindon; Andrew Surman was a cheap deal from Norwich City; Dan Gosling was a free agent. Josh King was a compensation deal with Blackburn Rovers agreed before tribunal at around £1.5million.
These are the kind of numbers that get chief executives and chairmen very excited indeed. Will Howe be able to do it again? The chances are that he will not have to. Keeping Bournemouth in the Premier League for a second successive season would be a tremendous achievement, but easier than the first time. Wherever he moves on to next, he will be working to different budgets and different pressures.
Howe's next job is crucial
The chances are that Howe will never again have to manage a side predominantly made up of free signings but what he has shown he can do is improve players, as he has done with centre-half Steve Cook, signed from Brighton in 2011 or Simon Francis, a free from Charlton Athletic in 2012 or Daniels, who came to Bournemouth from Leyton Orient while Howe was at Burnley.
That capacity to develop the players you already have is at the heart of all levels of football. It is what Manchester City hope Pep Guardiola will do for them next season. It is what the next Newcastle manager, if there is to be one this month, will be expected to do to galvanise that particular motley crew. It is what Rémi Garde has failed to do at Aston Villa.
It is a quality that the people who own football clubs prize above all, and it is one which will put Howe in great demand, although given how far he has come in such a short space of time, he is entitled to wait for the right job.
Sam Wallace - Telegraph
