Do I feel pressure? Every waking moment
Howe keeps faith as struggling Cherries stare into the abyss
THE portrait of a manager under pressure, his team rooted in the bottom three of the Premier League and games running out fast, begins with him opening his eyes soon after dawn last Friday morning. This is not a gentle awakening. This is the kind of jolt you get when you wake from a bad dream. Except when Eddie Howe wakes, he knows straight away it was not a dream.
‘At this point,’ says the Bournemouth manager, ‘I’m waking up and I’m thinking, “We’re in this position and we have got to get out of it”. And it’s the first thing that hits me — Bang! — as soon as I open my eyes. I’m aware of the situation we’re in and the importance of it. I’m aware of what has to be done. I’m aware there is not much time left.’
Howe smiles wryly about it. He carries the pressure well. He does not deny it exists. He does not deny that the situation is consuming him. But the pressure has not warped his ability to be honest. He still has his optimism. He still believes Bournemouth will escape. And, despite the strain, he still does not have any grey hairs. ‘Somehow,’ he says, ‘I have kept a resemblance of youth.’
The thoughts race round his mind; the permutations. The club’s last four games against Leicester, Manchester City, Southampton and Everton. Four games to go and now six points adrift of Watford and West Ham, who both won yesterday and are, realistically, the only teams Bournemouth can catch. One point gained against Spurs the night before but the thought of a stoppage-time goal ruled out by VAR ricocheting round his brain.
‘That was my first thought,’ he says. ‘I was thinking back to the key moments against Tottenham, the VAR moment where we thought we had won the game with a goal from Callum Wilson and then we hadn’t, and then Harry Wilson’s late chance, which was saved, and those sorts of moments were the first thing I reflected on.
‘And then very quickly, as always, you have to focus on today and tomorrow and your next game, which is Leicester. So very quickly you have to move on to what needs to be done today to get the best result possible. Sometimes, you have to lift yourself in the morning when you have just got up and you are brushing your teeth and you go, “Right, here we go, here we go again”.’
With his team in trouble like this, it could be easy to forget quite what an outstanding job Howe, who is still only 42, has done at Bournemouth. It is a fairytale in two parts. When he took over as manager in 2009, he saved t hem from falling out of the Football League in his first season and led them to promotion to League One in his second.
He had a short spell at Burnley before returning to the south coast and gaining promotions to the Championship in 2013 and the Premier League in 2015. He has kept the smallest club in the division in the top flight for r five years and he has not t done it by playing the per- centages. Bournemouth h have done more than survive. They have prospered by playing beautiful football.
If you want to gauge the scale of Howe’s achievement, look at Norwich City this season. They did not spend any money but they came up from the Championship with plaudits ringing i n their ears and adopted the same ball-playing philosophy Howe has used so well since Bournemouth were promoted to the Premier League. Norwich are heading straight back down.
Bournemouth are in a desperate fight, too. They have gained only two points from their last nine games and as they struggle, predictions of a painful financial reckoning if they go down swirl around them. Some rumours say Howe will leave next season whether Bournemouth stay up or not and centrehalf Nathan Ake and forward Joshua King are said to be on their way out, too.
Howe blots as much of that noise out as he can. He knows how quickly things change in the life of a manager. Belittled one moment, lionised the next, his reputation has travelled through several cycles already in his time at the Vitality Stadium but any sober judgment suggests he has achieved more than enough against the odds to warrant a job at a bigger club if he ever wanted to move.
Think about Spurs, for instance, Bournemouth’s B opponents l ast
Thursday evening. When Mauricio Pochettino left, they took the lazy, moribund option and went for Jose Mourinho and, to no one’s great surprise, t hings have quickly turned sour. How much better to have gone for a manager like Howe, whose quiet intensity and football philosophy would have made the loss of Pochettino less painful.
Howe thinks for a second when he is asked if he will be at Bournemouth next season. ‘That’s a really difficult one,’ he says, ‘ because there are so many unknowns. Usually, I would categorically give you an answer so I’m not swerving the question but I honestly don’t know. The only thing I want to focus on right now is keeping Bournemouth in the Premier League. You wouldn’t be human if your mind didn’t drift to the future but I quickly refocus on the here and now because the here and now is all that matters. I am pretty good at bringing my brain to where it needs to be. I have always been that way. My shortterm focus is very good. It has to be on the next game. Everything else beyond that will take care of itself. It can wait for another day.’
The portrait of Howe under this kind of pressure is difficult to draw because he r e mains r e l a t i vel y undemonstrati ve e ven under these extremes of strain. He is a thoughtful, understated man; easy to like. His expression flickers but it rarely betrays too much emotion. He did not lose himself in the moment when he thought Callum Wilson had scored on Thursday and his disappointment was muted when the goal was disallowed.
‘I don’t put on a public face to encourage my players,’ Howe says. ‘I wouldn’t say it is a face. I wouldn’t say I’m acting. Some people go in front of the camera and the minute the camera is off, you are something different. I don’t fall into that category. You have got to act the right way. You have got to show that you believe, that you are confi
dent, that you are representing the club and everything the club stands for in the right way. I don’t change depending on who I am talking to.
‘I know other people and other clubs make better drama and are better visually in terms of certain situations. But I am who I am and my character is what it is. I understand I may be not great drama at times. I’m quite level with good times, bad times. I don’t really change too much but there is quite a bit going on under the surface.’
Howe is more about inner strength than outward show and when it comes to making sure that he does not falter, when it comes to lifting himself, he goes looking for the times when his resolve and his belief were tested.
‘It’s an inner thing that is difficult to describe,’ he says. ‘That’s who I am. I have had so many setbacks and disappointments and challenges in my career in many different ways but I have always had that inner strength to go forward and look at the next challenge. This is just one moment in my career again where I have to do the same and try and find a positive outcome at the end of it.
‘I had bad knee injuries that ended my playing career early but even going back further than that, I was released by Bournemouth when I was 15 or 16 and at that moment you have a decision to make. So you have just been released by the club you wanted to play for and what do you do? I went back to school, into the sixth form at Queen Elizabeth School in Wimborne. I started my A-levels in maths, physics and PE and after a month, it was so hard that I was sitting there with my head in my hands, thinking: “What have I done?” I was prepared to do it but football was what I wanted to do.
‘And then I got a call from Bournemouth inviting me back because they were short of players. I could have said, “No, I’m not coming back, I’m focusing on my studies” but I decided I’d have another go and keep going and keep believing I could make it as a footballer. Anyway, maths and physics were tough. I was really pleased I got that phone call inviting me back.
‘Later on, the injuries came. Your career ends and what do you do next — and you end up going into coaching and so you’re lifting yourself off the floor again to try to do something else to the best of your ability. That’s all I can do — do everything in my power to be the best person I can be at whatever I am doing.’
In the previous four seasons Bournemouth have never dipped below 40 points but this season shows a sharp decline. Howe says the fault lies with themselves.
‘We haven’t hit the heights of the previous seasons. There have been valid reasons for that: we have had an horrific amount of injuries throughout the season to key personnel. There have been a few players that dipped below their high standards from previous seasons.
‘And as a consequence of that, we have lost a little bit of confidence along the way. In games previously, we may have gone behind and still got points and we haven’t done that enough this season. It’s had a knockon effect on our belief. Add those things together and that is why we are down on points this year to such a degree.’
But Howe still believes. The point against Spurs renewed that belief even though Bournemouth came so close to winning. Afterwards, he said he hoped their performance had reminded everyone that ‘we’re still here’.
‘I don’t know whether people had written us off,’ he says, ‘because I try to remove myself from comment and opinion but I can only imagine people were writing us off. Probably, if I were looking at it from the outside, I would have been writing us off as well.
‘I think it was very important we let our own supporters know that we are fighting for them and the club and that we are giving everything we can to stay in the division. It’s important from that side. It wasn’t the three points we wanted but who knows, that point could be hugely important at the end of the season.
‘Of course I still believe. I have always believed. My players have always believed. It’s just been so frustrating that we haven’t got the results that demonstrated that. The point against Spurs was a step forward. Now we have to show there is still time to turn it around.’