There are some things you just can’t do with a modern player . . . and sheep herding is one of them!
Innovator Eddie Howe will try anything to win the titles he couldn’t as a player
PLAYERS who end up becoming managers often stand out in the dressing room. There is something different. It takes a degree of self-confidence to survive that feral environment, where conformity rules and deviation from the norm is suppressed ferociously. Eddie Howe was one of those. He is being quizzed about liking the Eighties band, a-ha. ‘That’s not embarrassing!’ he insists, defiance quickly turning into laughter. ‘I’m very proud of that!’
In fact, a little probing brings more details which might have brought further disdain in the average football dressing room. ‘I do love the Eighties,’ he adds. ‘I’m not going to hide. Not the dress sense! But I do like Eighties music. I don’t think it’s escapist. I think it’s what I’ve always liked and if I like something it’s very hard for me to go away from that. So I live in the Eighties musically and enjoy that: Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Wham . . . ’
Quite how he survived eight years at Bournemouth and two years at Portsmouth as a professional is a mystery. ‘I used to get a lot of stick for music taste,’ he says. ‘My team-mates couldn’t understand it. But that’s what I like. And in the end, they sort of came round and said, “I like it as well. They’re not that bad”.’
Clearly this is the kind of independence of spirit English football needs. In the week that Gareth Southgate was appointed England manager, partly because many consider that at the age of 39, Howe is far too young for the job, it is a useful pointer for 2020, when Southgate’s contract runs out: Howe doesn’t mind standing out.
It’s been clear all along, really. Even at Burnley, a period which represents a 20month plateau in his rapid rise to being the most-loved, young, English manager. There he took the team sheep herding; think one man and his dog, but with 25 hardened professional footballers.
He rolls his eyes when it is mentioned. ‘It was quite extreme,’ he concedes. ‘I’ve never done sheep herding before — or since. I ended up having mini arguments with a couple of players. That’s why I view it as not a success overall. I got frustrated with their mindset. Maybe it was a moment, for me, of understanding that with the modern footballer there are some things you can’t do. And sheep herding might be one of them!’
He says this with a self-deprecating smile. But there is almost an obsession with getting the best out of this team and, by extension, himself. No potential for improvement goes unexplored. And a lot is riding on Howe’s career. Burnley’s Sean Dyche aside, promising young English managers in the Premier League are not a common breed.
Howe, whose playing career was ended at the top level by a knee injury at Portsmouth, fell into management when Bournemouth were broke, going out of the League and out of existence in 2008 and the club were desperate. Gary Lineker once wrote that English football might have discovered its own ‘special one’.
‘I considered myself quite intelligent for a footballer,’ says Howe. ‘I think even in my early professional years I was a bit different from the stereotypical footballer. You know there was a real choice for me at 18: do I go to university or do I become a footballer? And for some reason I chose to be a footballer. The love of the game was just too strong. ‘I consider myself a thinker about the game, even at a young age. But the big thing that influenced me in my managerial career was definitely frustration that I hadn’t achieved greatness. And as a player I wanted that so much. I wanted to play in the Premier League, I wanted to win trophies. I wanted to get promotions. I was obsessed by winning, and I didn’t do much of it.
‘When I had a choice to become a manager I didn’t have the physical limitations any more, I didn’t have the injuries to consume me, I had a fresh chance to win things.’
His playing career was understated. Rejected by Bournemouth at 16, he worked his way back to play for England Under-21s. He was on the cusp of the Premier League club, having been signed by Harry Redknapp at Portsmouth in the Championship, when his knee collapsed under the strain. He rather brutally considered that career-limiting injury to have been ‘self-induced’.
‘I am very self-critical. It helped me as a player to improve very quickly. But it probably limited where I got to because I was too hard on myself, pushed myself too hard,’ he says.
The work ethic is insatiable, as it is with many managers. He is speaking in the stadium dressing room. Pinned to the door, the last thing the players see before they leave, is a sign which reads: ‘Work Hard’. The day, which is bitterly cold, has started with an hour’s work-out in the gym. Tuesday was his birthday; it was the usual 12-hour day with a small celebration at the end, courtesy of his two sons, aged two and five.
‘I came home from training about seven o’clock,’ he says. ‘My kids were still up, and they sang me Happy Birthday. It wasn’t glamorous in any way. But it was nice.’
Howe was brought up by a single mum, Anne, in what sounds like the idyll of Chesham, which is in leafy Buckinghamshire. But that image belies his roots. ‘The part of Chesham where we lived was certainly not affluent,’ he says. ‘It was five kids in a three-bed terraced house. We didn’t have money at all.
‘When my parents were married, which is when we lived in Amersham, it was nice. But I was one when they got divorced and that’s when we moved and life changed. But I never felt deprived of anything. That’s probably the key thing. I never felt without warmth, love. So I had everything we needed.
‘My mum would get up at four o’clock and go to a newsagent to sort out and mark up the papers. She used to clean, she used to work in a shop. She would take three or four jobs to make ends meet. She was always buying or selling. Car boot sales. And we would always tag
along, early starts again, selling stuff she had around the house, which was fascinating to see.’
And though Graham Taylor was doing wonders at nearby Watford, Buckingounty. hamshire is not a football country ‘I felt it was more cricket, I was being pushed into cricket when I lived there. It was only when I came south that I found football being pushed towards me at 10, 11, 12. It could have been either sport I pursued. I considered myself a decent batsman, a right-hander. I had a great square cut. That was my shot. I was a bit like Robin Smith. Quite predictable; any width and it was gone.’
As a manager, his rise through the divisions, other than the 20-at -month stint Burnley, has been extraordinary. Bournemouth have been backed by Russian owner Maxim Demin since 2011 and lost £38.3million in the season they were promoted; then theyhad a wage bill of £30.4m and though it will have increased enormously now, it will still be at the lower end of the Premier League.
‘We’re coming from such a long way back in terms of facilities, ground, infrastructure, youth department,’ says Howe. ‘Everything is trying to catch up with the team. It’s our job to try t stabilise the club in the Premier League. If we can do that we have the chance to build everything underneath it.’
His story sounds a little like the medioo cre lower-league player who took Mainz from the backwaters of German football into the Bundesliga. Today Howe takes on Jurgen Klopp at the Vitality Stadium and the former Mainz and Borussiav
I told Wilshere I wanted him to commit to the town. He had no problem with that
When you hear Jurgen Klopp talk about his playing career it sounds like mine
Dortmund manager is a man who has provided a degree of inspiration.
‘Absolutely. I watched his Borussia Dortmund team and they sort of came out of nowhere for me, in terms of how they played. The pressing ethic was quite new at the time and to see it for the first time was quite inspiring. Then to see what he’s done at Liverpool, at closer hand, has been fascinating.
‘When you listen to him talk about his playing career it seems similar to mine. I never felt I was good enough to play at the top level. To go from where he has to where he is, and how he has attached himself at Liverpool to the fans in such a quick way is very impressive.’
But his influences are varied. Pep Guardiola is mentioned. ‘I think he would have to be up there. I wouldn’t say there is one team I’ve modelled us on. It’s a mixture of experiences, my own playing experiences and ideas. The Barcelona team he created was fascinating and there is so much to take from it. The trouble was in that period we felt so detached from that level of football. We were in League One. Watching that level of football and then thinking we could do that? It wasn’t really applicable.
‘Brendan Rodgers had a big influence, when I was at Burnley and he was at Swansea. You could attach yourself more to his journey and you could see it and discuss it with him. It wasn’t so far removed. Then Arsene Wenger, watching his Arsenal teams through the years.’ He might have seemed somewhat detached from the elite five years ago, but Bournemouth are in transition. The core of the side are still Howe loyalists, such as Simon Francis, Steve Cook and Ireland’s Harry Arter, who have journeyed with him through the leagues. Yet now he has £15m signings, such as Jordon Ibe from Liverpool, and England internationals, such as Jack Wilshere, to manage. Bringing in the likes of Wilshere on loan surely risked upsetting the balance of the team spirit?
‘Of course that’s a danger. If you don’t contemplate the pros and cons before doing something you could get into an area that’s uncomfortable for you. We thought about every eventuality and the deciding factor was the quality of the player. We just felt if you get Jack to his best levels he could take the team to a new level. He’s made a massive difference to the team. But the character, the individual, has fitted so well into the team that you wouldn’t know it’s a massive name.’
Interestingly, Wilshere isn’t commuting from London; he lives in the area. ‘One of the things I said before he came was, “I want you to really commit to the club and the town”. And he had no problems with that. He said, “That’s what I want to do”. It reaffirms your belief he’s come for the right reasons.’
And Wilshere, like all the players, gets individual treatment from Howe: one-to-one assessments where their performance is analysed and goals are set. There aren’t many managers who do it for every player in the detail Howe does. ‘They’re not confrontational,’ insists Howe. ‘They are very relaxed, discussion based. I want them to put as much into them as I do. They are to help them, not to cause fights.’
If anything, it seems his devotion to his players is driven by his own failures. ‘It’s a frustration if I see someone waste their talent. That’s been when we’ve clashed. It infuriates me and frustrates me and I want better for them. I can see their career going one way and I see it as my job to try to intervene. I can’t understand when you see hugely talented people and you think what you could be.’
Howe, it seems, is destined to avoid that fate.