‘First training session’ at Bournemouth told Bartley that Howe was a special coach

Marvin Bartley insists Celtic target Eddie Howe was on a hiding to nothing at Burnley as he backed his former manager to make a success of himself north of the Border.

The Livingston captain followed Howe to Lancashire when he made the move up to the English Championship in 2011 and revealed the inner workings of the dressing room when speaking to Open Goal.

Howe is the favoured candidate of the Celtic board to become the club’s next permanent manager, Celtic fans are largely delighted to see their club linked with such a name in British coaching circles.

However, there is some concern that his magic only worked at Bournemouth after anunderwhelmingspellatturf Moor over 18 months.

"The changing room was so bad in terms of drinking culture,” Bartley recalled. “They were such massive drinkers. I remember one night when we were going to a game and you could hear the sound of glass bottles hitting each other as we got off. Like, we’re playing tomorrow, man!

“Therewasnothingyoucould dowiththatchangingroom.he [Howe] tried to change things and go with a younger team, but the board wanted success right away. They wanted to get the club back to the Premier League. It’s not that easy.

“The difficulty is that a lot of themwerethesameageashim. When they weren’t doing what he wanted them to, he was like ‘right, you’re going’. But the thing was that a lot of them knewtheyweregoingattheend of the season, so it just went the other way.”

Asked when he realised that Howe was a special coach after the former full-back initially took over from Jimmy Quinn at Bournemouth, Bartley said: “Right from the first training session.

“He’d be like this is how we’re going to play on a Saturday and we’ll strip it right back to the Monday, this is how we’re going to beat them. This is their strengths. This is their weaknesses. So we’d do 11-v-11 and he’d be like this is the weakness of their left-back, so every time he gets the ball we’re going to press him this way.

“We always knew where the ball was going and we always knew who we were going to attack and how we were going to attack them.”