Eddie Howe, then and now A lot has changed since FFT first met the Cherries’ boss in 1994
A lot has changed for Eddie Howe since making his FFT debut as a Bournemouth trainee 25 years ago, not least his hair...
“How young do I look there?” Eddie Howe is gazing forlornly at a picture of his former self, taken 25 years ago, the first time we met. Commissioned by Fourfourtwo to interview a youth player, I discovered that my cousin had been at school with the young Howe, so simply phoned his house and arranged to meet him at Dean Court. It’s a very different approach today. Following high-level negotiations I’m summoned to the Vitality Stadium, which is gleaming in the south coast sunshine. The pitch is immaculate, and it’s a hive of activity. I’m even impressed that it has a reception. Last time, I just hung around by the entrance until he appeared.
Pleasingly, Howe has equally vivid memories of that fateful day, although he initially thought the whole thing was a wind-up by his Bournemouth team-mates.
“I did, because it seemed like I was randomly picked,” he claims. “It was strange because I was in the YTS youth team at the time, trying to make a career. To find yourself in a magazine as popular even then as Fourfourtwo was a good taste of the interview process and the photography side of it, which I’d obviously never seen before. So I automatically think back to that interview – I remember aspects of it and it was a great experience to go through.
My Mum bought about 20 copies, and I still find the odd magazine. The trouble is, if you’re going to recreate that picture, I’ll probably get a little depressed. Look at me now!”
Bournemouth then was very different to Bournemouth now, and indeed only four issues later FFT was back at Dean Court to interview manager Mel Machin, as the Cherries beat Shrewsbury on the final day of the season to secure their Second Division status.
As Howe says, “All along the journey I think there’s been turning points for the club where a step here or a step there and things could have been very, very different. There could have been more downs in terms of the relegations, but we’ve managed to pull off a few Great Escapes over the years. It’s well documented in terms of financial issues that the club could have gone out of business, so for us to be sitting here now and talking about Bournemouth as a Premier League club is just ridiculous.”
Sat in this swish modern ground, it’s hard to think there were once bucket collections to ‘Save The Cherries,’ with other clubs chipping in.
“Not long after that interview, we had a meeting over in the Winter Gardens,” says Howe. “That was basically a do-or-die meeting where we had to raise money or the club was going to fold. I was 17 at the time, and you become used to that just being life at a lower-league football club. You’re constantly battling to stay in existence.”
On the field at least, Howe’s career was on the rise. An established right-back, he attracted the attention of former Bournemouth boss Harry Redknapp, long before he was known for eating a kangaroo’s anus or whatever they do in the jungle.
“We’d actually played against Harry’s teams a few times,” recalls Howe. “I remember playing against his West Ham team in what is now the Carabao Cup – I’m not sure what it was called back then! I’d done all right, I’d played well. This was at Upton Park and we lost the game 2-0, but I played well and I remember speaking to Harry after. I think he quite liked me as a player, so when he got the job at Portsmouth it was a great move for me, and I felt very privileged to be his first signing at Portsmouth.”
Making the step up to the second tier, sadly Howe never fulfilled his potential as a player due to injury.
“I had a couple of injuries,” Howe confirms ruefully. “I thought I was having a good game on my debut at Preston, but I picked up a minor knee injury, nothing serious.
“I got back fit, did all the pre-season the next year and felt good, but then injured my knee really badly on the first day of the season against Nottingham Forest. I think it was about five minutes into the game and from that moment my career took a massive turn – I was never the same player again.
“I remember being told I would probably have to retire. This was still quite early in my career, probably when I was 24 or 25. I went to see a specialist and he said, ‘I think this could be career-ending’, and it really did feel like my life had ended. I had no backup plan and was devastated. But because I was out for so long, I almost had time to get my head around it, so when the end did come I think I was better prepared to move on quite quickly.
“I was out for two years and when I came back I was 26. I moved back to Bournemouth and played on for a few more years, but I was struggling, to be honest. I was never the same player and was aware of that, so I was keen not to hang around for too long when I wasn’t performing well. Thankfully, I got a coaching offer from Kevin Bond and I went that way.”
Albeit under trying circumstances, this is where the Eddie Howe story really begins. Following various appointments and sackings at the club, Howe began 2009 as first-team manager, the youngest in the Football League. Slight caveat: Bournemouth had been deducted 17 points and were staring down the barrel of relegation from the Football League. Astonishingly, the rookie boss kept them up.
“It was a great time,” he recalls. “At the time I thought it was the worst possible start to a management career because you risk losing everything. You risk losing the league status of a team that’s always been in the Football League, and you risk potentially losing the club altogether. So I thought, ‘I’ve been made the fall guy here, it’s going to be my responsibility.’ But the reality is I looked at it as a wonderful challenge, a great opportunity that I might not get again. The people had trusted me to keep Bournemouth in the Football League, a great privilege really. I learnt more in those six months working under that pressure than I ever realised. It was a great grounding for me.”
I remind Howe that my team, Chester, actually did go down that season, went bust within a year and now languish in National League North as a reformed club. With razor sharp recollection, he responds, “We had a really good battle with Chester. We went up there with only three games of the season to go, and knew that it was a pivotal one.
“IT REALLY FELT LIKE MY LIFE HAD ENDED AFTER THE SECOND INJURY – I HAD no BACKUP PLAN AND WAS DEVASTATED”
For this escape alone, Howe would have gone down in Bournemouth history, so it’s no surprise that they kept him on for the next season. Naturally, there was a snag.
“That summer I’d had meetings with then-chairman Eddie Mitchell and discovered we were under a transfer embargo,” he says. “At the time it felt like an injustice, but looking back on it now, it was a great education for me to have to go without the transfer market as a way of bringing in players. It taught me the value of improving the ones we had and working with the players in a way that you can get the best out of them. That has stayed with me ever since.”
He certainly got the best out of them, following up the flirtation with relegation by securing automatic promotion in his first full season as a manager. This success didn’t go unnoticed in football’s wider world, though, and in January 2011 Howe had a big decision to make.
“I had three clubs say they wanted me to be their new manager – Crystal Palace, Charlton and Burnley,” reveals Howe. “I was immensely torn between staying because I absolutely love this club and felt like the journey wasn’t over. But I chose to leave and decided to take what I felt was the hardest challenge and furthest away geographically, so I had to fully commit to the new role.
“With Crystal Palace and Charlton, there may have been a tendency to maybe keep my roots here, or be travelling to and fro because I had family here. But I felt I wanted to fully commit to it so I chose Burnley. I was really impressed by the people I met at Burnley and was very honoured to take the role there.”
However, after 8th and 13th-placed Championship finishes, Howe decided to leave Turf Moor citing personal reasons, and headed home in October 2012.
By now, Bournemouth had dispatched the traditional consortium of local businessmen in favour of Russian rubles. Again, Howe found himself at the helm, and the roller-coaster ride really began in earnest.
“I met the owner, Maxim Denim, and he set out his plans for me,” says the 41-year-old. “I think we were in the League One relegation zone at the time and he said, ‘We want to get to the Premier League.’
I was bit taken aback. I said we had to be realistic and think very, very long term, but he turned round and said, ‘No, I want promotion from League One this season!’ And we went and did it. Then in the Championship, he said, ‘Now I want to get to the Premier League.’ He wanted it very quickly, and quicker than I thought I could deliver it. Ultimately we did it in two seasons – even we didn’t see that coming.”
Memorably pipping Watford to top spot by a single point, this was followed by an open-topped bus parade along Bournemouth beach. A further celebration was just around the corner too, with Howe now a Freeman of Bournemouth. It means he is legally allowed to corral his sheep along that same beach, and furthermore, “sit in a church, even if it’s reserved, so I got some good perks!”
The greatest perk, of course, was reaching the promised land of the Premier League, where the Cherries are now arguably an established fixture after finishing 16th, 9th and 12th over the past three seasons.
“The Premier League is something I’d only ever watched on telly,” smiles Howe. “Never got there as a player. Even when we were there with Portsmouth I was injured and withdrawn from the whole thing. Then when you’re managing there, it’s what it looks like on the telly. The standard is incredibly high, all the players are a lot quicker and technically better, the atmospheres are incredible and the pressure is intense. So it was everything I thought it would be and more.”
I remind him of a Saturday night game at Stamford Bridge early in his first season. On a day when Chester had lost 3-1 at Cheltenham, the Cherries won 1-0 at Chelsea – a baffling concept but one to give cheer to anyone supporting a shithouse team from a nowhere town.
“That was the game that changed the players’ belief,” says Howe. “We had a slight inferiority complex when we first got there, naturally I think. We questioned whether we belonged at the level. The players had done so well in the Championship, but were we going to be able to go again in the Premier League? That was the result that told us, ‘Yeah we’re good enough, we can do this’. A week later we won 2-1 at home to Manchester United, so those two results very close together gave everyone the confidence lift we needed.”
It has been suggested in some verbose quarters that clubs such as Bournemouth don’t rightfully belong in the Premier League, but Howe unsurprisingly refutes this.
“The beauty of the English football system is that anyone can get to the Premier League if they’re good enough, and that’s how it should be,” he says. “The promotion and relegation battles you have up and down the leagues is what makes the pyramid so great, and I think we give hope to every lower-league team, even right down to the National League. Obviously you need a load of things to go your way and you need investment, but our story proves it’s a little bit more than that. Hopefully we do give hope to everyone.”
“TO BE SITTING HERE WITH YOU NOW AND TALKING ABOUT BOURNEMOUTH AS A PREMIER LEAGUE CLUB IS RIDICULOUS”